It is a “delusion” to believe that there is a neutral value system that can replace religion in education, the head of the Church of Ireland, Archbishop Richard Clarke, has said.

Writing in today’s Irish Times, Archbishop Clarke said that the idea that faith “is somehow an additional, optional appendage to ‘ordinary life’…..is a flawed and disingenuous philosophy”.

Dr Clarke is the Church of Ireland archbishop of Armagh.

Archbishop Clarke added: “The absence of any echo of religious faith in the public square does not bring about the absence of all ideology or public conviction, even if this conviction is now in something other than any religious perspective. Very few people can live their lives with no convictions or principles; to do so is to live aimlessly, disjointedly and truly “pointlessly”.

“There is no neutral value system that is the default position for “normal” humankind. Religious faith should not expect to be the only voice to be heard in public. It is, however, a delusion to believe that the only natural state for humankind is to hear no ideological voices of any kind.  

Because of this, he said, “proper education cannot….be an ideology-free or value-free zone”.,

Archbishop Clarke added: “The education of children will always have some value-system at its heart. It would be dangerous if it were otherwise.”

He also pointed out that “the overwhelming majority of the population of the Irish Republic admits to membership of a faith community”.

He said: “A recent survey was undertaken within national schools under Church of Ireland patronage and it clearly indicated that more than 90 per cent were very happy with the religious aspect of Church of Ireland national schools.

“As we seek to chart an educational future for Ireland, our starting point should be that there is at present no particular reason to move away from an educational system which, certainly at primary school level, functions broadly in accordance with the general approval of parents and is reflective of the religious demographics of the country.”

He added: “There should certainly be different types of school, some of which will be avowedly non-faith in educational method, and others will clearly encompass a faith content that has real meaning and is more than a cursory nod in the direction of religion.”

Church of Ireland schools, Archbishop Clarke said, must always strive for an ethos which was “a wholesome place, sited at some distance from a crude indoctrination on the one hand, and a vapid, vague congeniality on the other”.

At the heart of this ethos, he added “will be the RE curriculum and the place of worship, and religious education cannot simply be phenomenological in approach, as though “religion” were a moderately interesting specimen on a laboratory bench”.

He said: “It is not indoctrination or brainwashing to present religious faith as something that is central to the way one lives one’s entire life; this is to fall into that trap that religious faith is somehow an optional extra in which an individual may indulge in his or her spare time if deemed worth the bother.”