The Laustsi Decision and the Irish Education System

I have an article in today's Irish Times on the Lautsi decision and the need for a secular education system in Ireland
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0411/1224294389373.html

The establishment of a forum on the question of patronage of Irish schools by the new Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn means that the coming months are likely to see major debate on the question of the relationship between religious denominations and the education system.

Those in favour of the denominational nature of Irish system have been heartened by last week’s ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in the Lautsi case.

In this case the Court reversed a previous ruling and held that the presence of crucifixes in Italian state schools did not amount to a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

However, those who see the Lautsi judgment as evidence that the Irish education system is in compliance with our European human rights obligations would do well to examine the judgment more carefully.

The Court’s conclusion that the presence of crucifixes in state schools did not breach the right of parents to ensure education is provided in a manner that respects their philosophical convictions was based primarily on the idea of “margin of appreciation”.

The Court noted the diverse approaches of European countries to religion in schools and held that such diversity made it appropriate for it to grant a degree of deference to Member State practices.

Its conclusion that Italy had not exceeded this margin was based on the fact a crucifix on a wall in an otherwise secular school is an “essentially passive symbol” and that there was no compulsory teaching of Christianity or use of “teaching practices with a proselytising tendency” in Italian schools.

Contrast this situation with that in Ireland where over 90% of schools are under the patronage of the Catholic Church and where the “integrated curriculum” means that the religious ethos of the religious patron is intended to permeate the entire school day and teaching of all subjects. 

In short, the degree of interference with parental rights inherent in the current Irish education system is much more severe than that upheld by the Court in Lautsi.

The Catholic Church has indicated that it is willing to hand over control of some of its schools to reflect changing religious demographics. However, we are likely to remain with a system that is overwhelmingly denominational in character.

Those who are in favour of a system of denomination schools argue that such a situation represents the best way to guarantee parental choice. However, one can only justifiably claim that degree of choice that is consistent with a similar degree of choice for others.

A denominational education system fails such a test. In many areas there is only sufficient population to support a single school. If a majority of parents in that area are of one faith and a denominational school is established to reflect this, all other parents will be required to send their children to schools that actively promote a religion other than the one they desire to pass on to their children.

It would not be reasonable for Catholic parents living in an area that is 55% atheist to have to send their children to schools dedicated to the promotion of atheism, where atheism permeates the school day and the walls of each classroom hold pictures of atheist figures such Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

Similarly is it unreasonable for non-Catholic parents in majority Catholic areas to have send their children to schools that promote the Catholic faith.

One cannot claim a school run by your own denomination is vital to reinforce the ability to pass on your religion to your children while at the same time arguing that there is no real damage to those of other faiths required to attend such schools.

A denominational system provides choice for some only at the cost of the rights of others. The only fair approach is for the State to provide educational facilities that promote neither any particular religion, nor atheism. This is the only approach is capable of respecting the rights of everybody equally.

The values to be promoted by such schools will, of course, require careful negotiation to ensure the adequately respect the convictions of diverse groups of parents as well as the rights of the child.

In areas where the population can support more than one school, it may well be reasonable for the state to facilitate religious parents by establishing further schools to accommodate a desire for denominational education. However, it should only do so once it has fulfilled its obligation to provide everyone with educational facilities that can be used by those of all faiths and none.

As it stands, the education system in Ireland effectively requires parents to send their children to schools that actively promote a faith that is contrary to their own. Such a situation is some distance from the scenario of secular schools with a passive symbolic crucifix accepted by the Strasbourg Court in its judgment last week.

The Lautsi decision should not therefore be taken as any indication that current relationship between religious organisations and the education system is compatible with the European Convention.

Indeed, given the commitment of our own constitution to respecting parental rights and Article 44.2.4’s protection of “the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending religious instruction” one may well share the doubts of the 1996 Constitution Review Group that they system is even compatible with Bunreach na h-Éireann.

Democratising Academia

Academia has been the subject of significant criticism in recent times. In the UK the Browne Report calls on universities to follow a market model, with student "consumers" deciding on which courses will and will not be taught. This is based on the ludicrous idea that only that which 18 year olds find appealing should be taught. This is a recipe for hugely undermining universities' ability to produce graduates who are culturally literate with the intellectual depth to apply analytical and intellectual skills in a range of situations. 


My own experience of studying law has been that there were a number of course such as tort and contract that I found boring and would not have chosen to study. However, the background knowledge of the overall nature of the legal system that these courses gave me has proved indispensable in allowing me to properly analyse the subjects, such as constitutional law and EU law, that I would have chosen to study anyway.


As was shown by the exodus of British students from foreign language learning that followed the removal of the requirement to study languages beyond the age of 14, young people, if given the chance, will avoid courses that require initial effort to build up basic skills in favour of those that offer more immediate gratification. A market-based approach is a surefire way to further undermine the idea of a shared public culture and is a further move to promote the individualistic, consumerist ethic that has done so much damage in recent decades.


More defensible have been critiques that argue that academics have become excessively narrow and jargon-focused in their writing http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/30/nick-cohen-higher-education-cuts. I tend to agree that this has happened and that academics should definitely minimise the jargon. I think the resort to jargon (particularly in literature and social sciences) is probably a status anxiety based reaction to the loss of social status that academics have undergone in the context of the glorification of money making that has occurred over the past few decades. 


That doesn’t make it justifiable (actually I think it is self-defeating and makes this status loss more acute). However, it is also important to resist the notion that academic writing should aspire above all at being "accessible" and should aim to secure the widest possible audience.

To break new ground academic authors often need to take as read, a large amount of material that most people don’t have the inclination or time to have read or thought about. They should make their work as open as possible to as large a number as possible, but producing new knowledge and critiques will often require focusing on limited audiences if nuance is not to be lost or if new material is not to drown amidst hundreds of pages of explanation of context.

There needs to be room in culture for that which most people find boring and inaccessible. Public policy and culture are already saturated with market ideas based on giving consumers what they want and the ability to withstand the pressure to appeal to narrower audiences is one of the more useful capabilities still possessed by universities (indeed, outside academia I would probably prefer public broadcasters like the BBC to be less democratic and to focus more on high culture even at the cost of lower ratings).


That said, specialisation in academia, caused partly by the huge increase in available knowledge brought about, inter alia,  by the internet, has made many academics unduly narrow in their focus. Juergen Habermas argued last year that to make a useful contribution to public intellectual life, commentators need to be willing to speak about subjects in which they do not specialise http://www.dublin.diplo.de/Vertretung/dublin/de/06/GI/Habermas__Veranstaltung.html. This brings the risk of making errors but that is one that must be accepted. 


I have met a heartbreaking number of academics who have no interest in broader issues or public life and who are only ever willing, even in private conversations, to venture views on their extremely narrow area. This seriously undermines the social value of academia. It is not a profession of technical experts like medical doctors or engineers, but a group who are meant to provide a broader intellectual approach that enriches public life and public culture. However, if undergraduate students are to learn only that that is immediately appealing to 18 year olds, the academics of the future are likely to be even more narrowly focused than their contemporary equivalents.