Ruane only concerned with one form of division

Barry White has raised the lamentable performance of Education Minister Catriona Ruane in his column. Ruane’s poverty of scope has already been questioned on this blog. As White identifies, she has one idea, changing the age of selection from 11 to 14. He concedes that academic selection at 11 is no longer tenable but maintains that Ruane still isn’t addressing the real structural problems within our education system.

White’s argument is a strong one. Our schools are currently operating in four different sectors with 50,000 empty places and Ruane has shown little inclination to confront this issue. In fact as a leading difference fetishist she is exacerbating the problem by promoting the Irish Language sector and championing the separate status of Catholic Maintained schools.

Academic selection is not the only factor fostering division and separation amongst pupils. If Ruane really wants to promote equality and harmony between schools she should provide more support for schools who wish to adopt integrated status and for those schools who wish to share and collaborate in terms of resources and curriculum. Seeking to abolish division based on ability, but to maintain community division unscathed is neither consistent nor helpful in building a better Northern Ireland.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football fever in Russia

Russia Blog is getting excited about Euro 2008. Indeed it is drawing parallels between Guus Hiddink and Peter the Great in terms of successful Russo-Dutch exchanges of expertise. Meanwhile, in Moscow, fans have been taking to the streets in order to celebrate the national team’s achievements.
Read more

Shia Revival

The Iranian author, Vali Nasr, has written an interesting book called The Shia Revival: How conflicts within Islam will shape the future .  Its argument is exceptionally pertinent at a time when European governments are edging toward arming Sunni extremists in Syria. Nasr portrays Shiism as the more liberal, palatable strand of Islam and a religion for underdogs.  He makes his point persuasively, although putting a progressive gloss on the regime in Iran and Hezbollah does undermine his thesis. A lot of the material is focussed on Iraq, where there is a Shia majority, which was suppressed during the presidency of Saddam Hussein.  The leading cleric, Ayatollah Sistani, is depicted as a moderating influence, who opposed retaliation as Sunni extremism threatened to cause sectarian civil war. The book’s opening chapter provides an erudite and fascinating history of factions within Islam.  The split dates back to the origins of the faith and a dispute over the prophet Mohammed’
Read more

Walker loada rubbish

Former BBC employee Brian Walker has overrun Slugger O’Toole lately with countless poorly structured, poorly written posts. It is possible quickly to recognize and avoid these by subjecting each Slugger piece to a cursory inspection and identifying those which feature characteristic lack of paragraphing and a tenuous grasp on the technicalities of linking source articles. Although I generally evade Walker’s posts by this method, occasionally (and unfortunately) I have persevered and found that their content is as unrewarding as the style in which they are written. Today, for instance, I inflicted upon myself Brian’s thoughts on a mooted Fianna Fail / SDLP merger . In actual fact, he is right to welcome news that the Southern Irish party has dropped this proposal from its agenda; however, the logic by which he arrives at this conclusion is parochial nonsense. To summarise, Walker believes that pursuing realignment with larger parties, whether they are from the rest of the UK or fro
Read more