Spitin’ Irish

I am definitely no expert when it comes to public education or how education policy is formed.\nI do have friends who have recently graduated and gone into education, some teaching in the suburbs surrounding my hometown and some venturing into inner city schools via Teach For America. \nFrom those friends, I hear about the various problems that persist at their schools and the underfunded school districts in general. \nNothing I’ve heard could have mentally prepared me for what I read about elementary school children in Ireland. \nApparently in the Irish school system, parents have to seek out “places” for their children to attend school. Unfortunately, this year in a suburb of Dublin called Balbriggan, “almost all” of the 90 children who could not find “places” in either of the town’s two elementary schools were black. \nWhat was the solution to this problem? Create a new school of course. \nTo me, a new school comprised almost entirely of black students who were denied “places” in the town’s established elementary schools reeks of discrimination and de facto segregation. Even local educators called the prospect “disheartening” and “concerning.” Ireland’s education minister Mary Hanafin insisted that the problem reflected bad planning and poor management of population growth, rather than racist attitudes at the existing schools. \nThough I would like to believe that there was no malicious intent on the part of the town’s school administrators, the statements of the black children’s parents seem to reflect otherwise. They were told that school “places” had to be “reserved” by February and that is why their children were denied admission. However, they are left wondering how white families who recently moved to the town were able to overcome that rule and enroll their children anyway. \nIn my opinion, that fact in itself should make it obvious to anyone that this situation was the result of something more than just a minor lag in urban planning or population management. \nThe other shock to my secular, democratic American self was that 98 percent of schools in Ireland are run by the Catholic Church – with Irish law giving them the right to discriminate against prospective students who don’t have certificates confirming that they were baptized into the faith. \nSo basically, if the 98 percent of schools run by the Catholic Church choose to exercise this right, that translates into “Sorry you little heathen children, you’re out of luck. What’s that? You want to learn to read and write? Well, maybe you should have gotten baptized.” \nIncidentally, many of the black applicants were Protestants, Muslims or had no religious creed. \nA school principal from a neighboring town said many parents “felt forced or coerced to have their child baptized to get a place in their local Catholic school.” \nIn the year 2007, I don’t understand how a parliamentary democracy like Ireland could have such a backward education system. \nHanafin would do well to try to update its racist and theocratic education system.