Faith-based schools offer more holistic education

RUAIRÍ QUINN wants to see half of the schools currently under church patronage moved to an alternative guardianship. If promoting pluralism is one of the reasons for this change, then that logic should operate in other spheres, especially in the political arena.

The Labour Party claims to be a socialist party and yet it has gone into coalition with a centre-right party Fine Gael, giving the government the largest majority ever achieved in the Dáil. In the interests of political pluralism, Mr Quinn’s Labour Party should be willing to donate one half of their assets to the Socialist Party. This would make the Socialist Party a more effective opposition force, which in turn, would be good for Irish democracy. Would the faithful of the Labour party welcome this gesture? I value faith-based schools because they can give a more holistic education. For example, when a biology teacher is sharing with her/his students the extraordinary biological and biochemistry processes involved in photosynthesis, in a faith-based school this can include, not alone the stupendous complexity at work in the process, but the awe that this knowledge might evoke from the students. Encouraging students to link biology with faith and ethics promotes a much more rounded education than if one banishes the faith from this discourse.

Mr Quinn, and others who promote a secularist educational philosophy, would like us to believe that their position is value–neutral. It is nothing of the sort, since it denies the existence or relevance of the spiritual dimension of life. I believe that, when people fill in the census form on April 10 , the vast majority will indicate that they are religious people.