Ireland to state-run schools: no religion class
• Ireland’s staterun secondary schools can no longer assume that their students will receive religious instruction, the government has said, directing the schools to offer alternative classes — a striking move in a country where education has long been dominated by the Roman Catholic Church.
Irish law already states that government-run schools cannot require students to take religion classes, which have been dominated by Christian doctrine. But that law has had limited effect, as schools have routinely enrolled all students in the courses unless their parents opted out.
The schools have not usually offered alternative classes, often requiring that exempted students remain in their classrooms during religion courses that they were, in theory, not taking. This week, the Department of Education directed staterun secondary schools to end the opt-out requirement — so that taking a religion class would be an affirmative choice, not a default — and to offer other courses that could be taken instead.
And on Wednesday, the Teachers’ Union of Ireland called for the change to apply to all secondary schools in the country, including religious ones.
About half of the country’s secondary schools are run by governmental organizations, according to the Department of Education, including most vocational schools. But despite also being government-funded, almost all primary schools
THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT ... MUST BE GIVEN EFFECT.
in Ireland are religious, with the vast majority run by the Roman Catholic Church.
State-run schools have long offered religious instruction in keeping with community norms — which almost always means Catholic, in a country where about four-fifths of the population identifies as belonging to that denomination.
“It may have been reasonable when these schools were originally established for a school to assume that its pupil population was predominantly Catholic and to arrange religious instruction accordingly,” the Department of Education said in a statement announcing the new policy. “In a changing context, the constitutional right not to attend religious instruction must be given effect through changed practices.”
The change offers the latest example of the waning influence of the Catholic Church over public policy and social mores, but the country’s education system also illustrates how deeply entwined the church remains in Irish life.
Catholic schools are allowed to give Catholic students preference in admissions, a phenomenon known as “the baptism barrier.” As a result, some non-Catholic parents have their children baptized in the church to get them into schools.
The centrist governing coalition is shepherding a bill through Parliament that would stop schools giving that sort of admissions preference, and would require religious schools to state publicly how they treat students who do not follow the school’s faith.