Keep religion out of the classroom

TODAY (December 2) is the bicentenary of the founding of the Society for the Education of the Poor in Ireland — a Protestant organisation aimed at providing non-denominational education with a values-in-common ethos, and without any attempt at proselytising.

By 1831, when the Imperial government established the Commissioners of National Education under the Lord Lieutenant, 137,639 scholars attended its 1,621 schools. The commissioners sought to provide, within a values-in-common ethos, separate teaching of secular subjects with a partition between those and optional religious instruction to be given by representatives of the various churches. This arrangement was gradually undermined, and culminated in the Rules for National Schools of 1964 and the “New Curriculum” of 1970 which sought to legitimise the lacing of all secular education with religion.

It has had a profound, adverse effect on the Constitutional right (in Article 44.2.4) of any child to attend any school in receipt of public money without receiving religious instruction, not to mention compulsory participation in in-school religious services, which were never anticipated as a school activity.