Catholic and Protestant youth in Northern Ireland embark on a brighter future
"I was only about 7 or 8 when they built the wall that's up now," Joe remembers. "And near enough every night of the week there was stones and bottles and things getting thrown over it from the Protestant Shankill Road."
Still, Joe wanted to join teacher Roy McFaul's Education for Mutual Understanding program, because he'd heard the activities were great fun. River canoeing, weekend camp-outs and even a week-long sailing trip awaited those students lucky enough to be chosen for the "Larne link" -- a year of adventures shared with Protestant students from Larne, a town 20 miles away.
To an outsider, the people of Northern Ireland look alike -- fair and freckled. But the natives can tell who is Catholic and who is Protestant. Where someone lives and works -- or whether they work at all -- provides a good clue (an employee of the government or the shipyards is probably a Protestant; an unemployed man is 2.5 times more likely to be Catholic). A person's alma mater is usually a dead giveaway. The whole pattern of life here centers on such distinctions.
Although the vast majority of citizens of Northern Ireland say they would like nothing better than to live together peaceably, the 1991 census reported that more than half of the people reside in neighborhoods that are overwhelmingly either Catholic or Protestant. Thousands of youngsters like Joe Byrne grow up in Northern Ireland without once meeting a child of the "opposite" religion.
The government-funded school system is divided along religious lines. At so-called "state" schools, the religious component of the curriculum (daily prayers and weekly chapel assemblies) is low-key but clearly Protestant, and some Protestant clergymen serve as teachers. Catholic schools have nuns, priests and Christian brothers on their faculties, display religious symbols and art, and, at the primary level, prepare children for their first communion.
Before recent reforms, history classes at most state schools avoided any mention of the "Irish question," while Catholic schools taught the history of Ireland and recent British politics from an Irish nationalist (i.e., anti-British) perspective. Catholic students also have the option of studying the Irish language. The differences even extend to sports: rugby, cricket and field hockey at state schools; hurling and Gaelic football at Catholic ones.
At the behest of former Education Minister Brian Mawhinney, educational reforms were introduced seven years ago that have sent Northern Ireland's school system reeling. The curriculum was standardized so that every student would learn the same history. The development of integrated schools was officially encouraged. And, under the Education for Mutual Understanding (EMU) program, teachers were required to weave into their lesson plans the concepts of self-respect, respect for others and the improvement of relations between cultures.
One aspect of EMU is an extracurricular program that brings Catholic and Protestant students together. And one of EMU's brightest stars shines in one of the poorest, most polarized parts of Belfast.
The Larne Link
A short walk from downtown, the Falls Road is the heart of Irish Republican Army country. This poor Catholic neighborhood is dotted with bombed-out buildings and housing projects. Hand-painted murals celebrating Irish nationalism decorate the sides of buildings; many of the store signs are in Irish. Just west of the Falls is the peace line, a barrier topped with barbed wire that separates this volatile neighborhood from its Protestant counterpart, the Shankill Road.
Just off the Falls Road at Beechmont Avenue is Corpus Christi High School. The school's 967 students -- Catholic boys between 11 and 18 -- are from nationalist, working-class families. With unemployment approaching 50 percent in this part of Belfast, even Corpus Christi's best students have little chance of finding work. Tenuous as it might seem, joining the IRA may provide the only security some of them will ever know.
The "Larne link" grew out of an acquaintance that developed when Roy McFaul, a teacher at Corpus Christi who lives in Larne, contacted Ian Thomson, a teacher at Larne Technical College, to borrow some canoes for his youth club. Before long, they hit upon the idea of pooling their activities.
"I didn't know Ian very well," says McFaul, "but I had an idea of his personality and approach. He's a very open, very receptive sort of person."
What sets their program apart from most others is that problem kids, not the best-behaved students, are selected to participate. McFaul and Thomson figured the troubled students would have the most to gain from such an encounter. Their parents seem to think so, too -- most have been "very keen" on it, hoping to keep their boys out of paramilitary groups.
One of the first exchange activities every year is a canoe trip on the River Bann. The boys are paired up, one Protestant and one Catholic in each boat.
"They've got to get their act together to canoe," explains Roy McFaul. "One person is rowing on one side, one on the other. You have to work in coordination, or you end up going around in circles. And that, to me, is what EMU is all about."
Almost half of Northern Ireland's schools now have exchange programs. McFaul says trust among the teachers involved is the most important ingredient in the link's success.
"It's a bit like a marriage," he observes. Simple practical concerns can put trust to the test. During weekend field trips, the boys are often paired off, one student from each school, and each teacher supervises a group of four to seven pairs.
"I'm relying on Ian to take care of discipline [for my students]," McFaul explains, "and make sure nothing happens to them." Teachers also need mutual respect in preparing and implementing the curriculum for these outings. "Teachers generally don't teach in front of other teachers," says McFaul. "You're having them put their professionalism on the line."
In the course of their collaboration, McFaul and Thomson have become personal friends, and their camaraderie rubs off on their charges. Several years after his exchange experience, Corpus Christi alum Joe Byrne still keeps in touch with his Larne buddies. "If me own friends are putting Prots down, I won't let them," he says. "I say a nicer group of people you couldn't meet."
Schoolmates
In addition to the links, the government supports integrated schools; 32 exist so far. Though only 6,000 children -- two percent of students -- currently attend such schools, their numbers are growing fast. The largest of the integrated primary schools (for students ages 4 to 11) is Oakgrove, located in Londonderry, on Northern Ireland's western border.
Two dozen parents helped raise the money, find the site and hire the teachers to get Oakgrove Primary going in 1991. That first year, the school served 68 children. Today there are 400 -- some enrolled since they were in diapers -- and many others on the waiting list.
Lynn Nott, who teaches Primary 1 (4- and 5-year-olds), came to Oakgrove after teaching 15 years in a "state" school. She says parental involvement is what makes integrated schools so special. The very act of choosing such an environment for their children demonstrates the parents' own desire to work with people who are different.
Oakgrove's principal, Anne Murray, is a warm, energetic woman who has worked hard to build trust and respect among the entire school family. Every year Murray puts her staff through a five-day personal growth workshop aimed at building self-esteem.
"[In Northern Ireland] we're very reluctant to say we're good at things," she observes, noting the religious view, common to both sides, that vanity is a sin.
Murray regards self-respect as a prerequisite for respecting others. She uses materials developed by a Seattle company called the Pacific Institute to help teachers learn how to acknowledge their own and others' positive attributes. In one activity, teachers pair off and list the personal traits each is proud of. Then two pairs get together, and the original partners describe each other's accomplishments to the new couple. Next, the foursomes double up, and so on. As the groups keep getting bigger and bigger, each teacher hears his or her own strengths described again and again.
Ongoing activities reinforce the workshop lessons throughout the year. In one exercise, staff members write their names on the blackboard -- including nicknames, confirmation names and married names -- and explain how they feel about them. The cultural differences the names reveal, principal Murray observes, offer an opportunity to reflect on the complexities of personal identity.
Using games and songs, teachers at Oakgrove Primary share image-boosting techniques with their students. In the game of "All Change," a teacher might say, "Everybody with blue shoes (or brown eyes or long hair), change chairs!" As the game proceeds, says Murray, children catch on to the fact that they each belong to many different kinds of groups. When the teacher says, "Everybody who's a Catholic, change chairs!" religious differences simply fall into a larger context.
"Because that's not something we want to hide," says Murray. "It's a resource. We'd like them to celebrate who they are. And that it's wonderful being different."
Mediation training is another important aspect of life at Oakgrove. Primary-7 students (6th graders) get six weeks of training in peer mediation and put it to use settling playground disputes. First, the teachers present lessons and lead discussions on what conflict is and how it arises. Then the students practice techniques of listening and negotiating. After their training, they're stationed by pairs in the playground, and children who are fighting can approach them for help in an orderly process of airing grievances, "echoing" to confirm listening, and brainstorming to find common ground.
After watching a friend's children blossom at Oakgrove, Ron Flannery decided to enroll his younger daughter there, over the objections of his family, who have strong loyalist (British) connections. They were afraid that integrated education would turn Connie into a "little Catholic."
Flannery's reponse underscores the goal of the whole movement for mutual understanding across the battle lines of religion and politics: "It's letting our children see how they live, and letting them see how we live -- there's no difference in it. Before, I didn't look any further than me own place where I lived."
Links:
[1] http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-11-spring-1997
[2] http://www.tolerance.org/author/margie-slovan