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Faith schools aren’t the problem

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Last week, a Scottish government-commissioned report found that Catholic schools are not the cause of sectarianism in Scotland. I’m not sure exactly how much this report cost, but I’m willing to bet that I could have reached the same conclusion for half that fee or even a bun.

Hearing people blame Catholic schools for religious division has long been a pet peeve of mine. I didn’t attend a Catholic school, nor would I send my hypothetical future children to one, but such schools are not the cause of negative attitudes, and there is not a thing wrong with their existence.

I was raised in a loosely Protestant household, and soon realised that religion was not for me, something that fazed neither my churchgoing mother nor my atheist father. All of my pre-university education took place at “non-denominational” schools in Scotland, but it didn’t take long for me to notice that something was amiss in that name. Throughout my 13 years at school, I was taken to Church of Scotland services more times than I’d care to count, yet never set foot in a Mosque, Synagogue, or even a different branch of the church.

Two friends of mine used to live on the same street in Edinburgh. They would play football, watch TV, listen to music, or take the bus into town together of an evening or weekend. Five mornings a week, they would walk to school together, then say their goodbyes as one went into the Catholic school, and the other the adjacent non-denominational. This was never an issue between them; they just spent their days in different schools, and that was that. The fact that they went to separate schools did not drive them to discriminate against one another, nor should it have.

I have at least two other friends who went to Catholic schools in England, yet neither are Catholic. This is not unusual; being considered better schools and geographical convenience are common reasons for non-Catholics to attend Catholic schools in England, as I understand it. Scotland’s problems with sectarianism are well-documented; England has plenty of Catholic schools, yet has nowhere near the same level of trouble with it. Catholic schools are not the problem.

Moreover, those who blame the schools would do well to remember why this divide exists in the first place. Prior to the 1872 Education Act, the Catholic community in Scotland feared a great deal of Presbyterian influence in the school system, and so formed their own. Given my experience, over 120 years later, it looks as though they had a point.

At the risk of repeating myself, for the avoidance of doubt: I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Catholic. I have had no element of Catholicism in my education or upbringing. I presently have no desire to raise any children I might have in that faith, or any other.

However, it is clear that some parents want to send their children to Catholic schools, and I see no reason they shouldn’t be able to do that. What would be great is if we could all just get along, regardless of which schools we all went to and to what religion, if any, we belong. Let’s aim for that, rather than pointing fingers at why our society is so divided.

And, as a footnote, if our much-championed “non-denominational” schools could be just that, that would be smashing. There’s nothing wrong with learning about the religions of the world; indeed, I think it’s very important. However, giving one far more airtime than the others seems very morally dubious, especially when, as the 2011 census results show, Scotland is far less a Protestant country now than it has been for hundreds of years. When the majority of our state schools are strongly skewed towards one religion, and this is presented as the norm, that creates more of an ‘us and them’ mentality than having schools which are openly dedicated to teaching in any particular faith.


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