The Island of Saints and Scholars

The Irish education system is, to me, filled with paradox. I have to say that I consider it a pretty good one, as education systems go, and I believe that there is a certain traditional veneration and respect for education in Ireland, that has seen us through some grim times, and will be instrumental in getting us out of the mess we are currently facing. On the other hand, I am passionately opposed to so many things that are intrinsic to the way education is managed in my country.
Religious schools. The overwhelming majority of schools in Ireland are faith schools. National schools have a religious patron.The overwhelming majority of those are Catholic schools. Which means not only that religion is taught in schools, that classtime is spent preparing children for their 'Holy communion', but that children whose parents can't produce a baptismal certificate get put way down the list for a place at school. Many parents who otherwise don't trouble a church have their children christened so that they will get into a decent school. This system implements a kind of institutional racism. Children of parents from other countries, where Catholic is not a default setting, are discriminated against under this method of selection.
There is an organisation called EducateTogether who are working to counteract this. They support multidenominational, co-educational and child centred schools across Ireland.
What really baffles me is the resistance shown to their work. The first school of this kind, the Dalkey Project School, was set up in 1974, by a group of parents who wanted their children to attend a multidenominational school. The awesome Dr. Aine Hyland was one of the co-founders. She wrote;

"Those of us who had given a lot of thought to what we were doing and who could see the issue in a broader European and international perspective felt that there was nothing revolutionary about the request to have the option of multi-denominational education available in just one area of the country. But this was not how the rest of the population saw it, or so it seemed to us at the time. It was as if we were in some sense dangerous radical subversives about to undermine the structure of society. A pamphlet which was distributed in the Dalkey area called on the electorate to contact their members of parliament or to write to the Minister of Education registering their objection to the proposed school and it stated as follows: Atheistic interest in the Dalkey School Project is clear. Ireland's system of education is denominational by Constitutional guarantee ... we submit that there is no need for such a school as this which can only be divisive. It can only be hostile to religion in an age when it was never more needed ... Dalkey could be a precedent for major trouble in other areas." Seriously? A precedent for major trouble in other areas? Catholic kids and Protestant kids, and kids of no religion, and other religions going to school together?!? Yes, that's divisive. That was back in 1974, and things have changed since then. But not that much, and a lot of people still feel this way, or at least see no reason why the system of religious patronage in schools should change.