Nurturing a love of living in harmony at Scoil Aonghusa

“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” - Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

AS a community national school, Scoil Aonghusa provides a welcome to each child in the community and creates learning opportunities in a setting of diversity and inclusion. The school caters for the physical, academic, social, emotional and spiritual needs of children within the school day in a supportive and caring environment.

Over the past six weeks the pupils have been learning about human rights, gaining the knowledge they need to develop understanding, respect and tolerance for others. The pupils researched and learned about everything from the UN Declaration on Human Rights and The European Convention on Human Rights to the nine Grounds of Discrimination laid out by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. The knowledge the pupils gained will encourage them to accept one another and embrace difference, to tackle prejudice and to develop good relationships at school, home and in the world around them.

Each class took part and they did artwork to represent their views on the world and how they would like to be treated, which was displayed in the foyer of the new school.

When told about the project, Future Search Facilitator, Tara Haughian of Second Nature in Co. Down said:

“I was delighted to hear about this school project.

“As humans we break down in smaller and smaller groups based on beliefs and experiences but in the right circumstances we can integrate with others based on other things we discover we share in common or we can live with.

“Doing projects like this, allowing children to find out what they share in common, learning songs, phrases of language and designing and making artwork are active activities that engage the brain and allow children to naturally and easily absorb new ideas.”