Church control of schools should end

YOU report (November 4) how the European Court of Human Rights wants to ban crucifixes from school classrooms in Italy. Such a ban would be welcome but in the view of our group, Count Me Out, it would not go far enough.

In Ireland, 92% of primary schools are run under the patronage of the Catholic Church. This is an unsustainable position given the changing demographics of the country and the fact that more and more people are walking away from a church that has lost its moral authority. The spokesperson quoted in the report stated that the Catholic ethos of schools is “supported by Catholic parents”. This truism hides the fact that many parents of children enrolled in Catholic schools are not themselves practising Catholics.

Our group has received numerous queries and emails from parents who would wish to give their child a secular education, but have been forced to send them to the local Catholic school and, in some instances, forced to have them baptised in order to gain enrolment.

Faced with a system that integrates Catholic education into all aspects of school life, their solution is often for their child to sit out religious instruction, excluding them from the other children. What of their rights? The removal of the church’s control on schooling is a more pressing concern than the removal of crucifixes.

Paul Dunbar

Clarence Place

St Lukes

Cork