Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland has outlined his wishes for Irish schools in The Irish Times. If implemented they would result in the effective elimination of every denominational school in the country, bar a few privately-funded ones.
The details of his proposals you can read in his article [1]. However, if you strip down his vision to what I believe is its core, it is based on the delusion that it is possible to run a school on the basis of an all-inclusive ethos.
This, of course, is absolutely impossible. Nugent himself says he wants schools to teach what he calls “moral education”, so long as it is kept separate from religion.
Presumably he wants moral education kept separate from religion because religion, in his opinion, cannot be all-inclusive while morality can be. This is nonsense, of course. There is no system of morality to which everyone subscribes any more than there is a religion to which everyone subscribes. Morality is every bit as controversial and controverted as religion.
In the same vein Nugent speaks of giving children an “objective, pluralist education”. What does the word “objective” mean here and who decides what is “objective” and what is not? Ultimately some authority must decide. I wish that authority luck in coming up with an “objective” vision of education that everyone agrees is “objective”.
No matter what kind of morality Nugent’s schools would teach, no matter what kind of “objective, pluralist education” it offers, many parents would end up disagreeing with it.
What is to be done with these parents in his vision? What schools are to exist for them? None, is the answer, unless they can afford private schools.
What is noticeable about Atheist Ireland’s proposals for our schools is the short shrift it gives to what parents want for their children.
At present, the Constitution puts parents in the driver’s seat constitutionally speaking. It makes the State their servant. It allows that there will be a plurality of opinions among parents as to the education, including the moral and religious education, they want for their children.
It rejects a one-size-fits-all vision, which is really what Nugent’s ‘inclusive’ vision amounts to, a vision that by definition cannot include everyone because as with religion and morality, there are multiple conflicting visions of what education should offer.
The State has no right to impose what it believes is the ‘correct’ one.