Promoting a culture of tolerance: education in Northern Ireland
by Fiona Stephen
The basic premise of the planned integrated schools themselves - that integration
should be available as a choice not imposed - combined with the demography
of Northern Ireland (the population is not equally or evenly distributed)
means integrating education in this formal sense cannot be the only educational
strategy to overcome the religious and political division within the education
system. The need for some educational programme to contribute towards improving
community relations which could be delivered irrespective of which or what
type of school an individual attended, has been the impetus for various
curriculum initiatives and cross-community contact schemes. The 1989 Education
Reform legislation included Education for Mutual Understanding (EMU)ix and
Cultural Heritage themes within the prescribed Northern Ireland Core Curriculum
(NICC). These were intended to open up the curriculum to include perspectives
and content belonging to the 'other' tradition within the community and
to encourage inter - school links. The striking limitation of this well-meaning
approach was the potential for creation and reinforcement of cultural and
religious stereotypesx, along with the total lack of recognition for people
within Northern Ireland society who did not fit into the 'catholic/nationalist'
and 'protestant/unionist' cultural slots, most notably for example, members
of the substantial Chinese community. Furthermore, positive inter-group
contact and collaboration could not be achieved by coercion; so excellent
and innovative as many school links were, involvement in inter-school links
and cross-community contact schemes was voluntary. The successful projects
were entirely reliant on the heroic efforts of a few individuals, usually
operating on limited budgets and often depending on support and assistance
from outside community and voluntary workers. The programme was only as
effective as the teachers and the individuals involved chose, or were able,
to make it.xi The lack of provision for a comprehensive teacher training
programme in community relations was a serious flaw in the Education Reform
Order, particularly as EMU and Cultural Heritage were compulsory cross curricular
themes which were supposed to filter through all subject areas. Often teachers
who had volunteered for EMU inset courses, found themselves designated the
EMU 'person' on the staff and were left with a responsibility for which
many felt ill prepared and lacking in confidence to deal with, often in
schools where the climate was at best indifferent and at worst hostile.
While the level of contact projects has increased quite considerably particularly
since 1994,xii it has been recognised that EMU as a curriculum area needed
to be reviewed particularly in the light of the Belfast Agreement.
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