Paper for Education and Citizenship in a Globalising World conference, Nov. 2010

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1 Paper for Education and Citizenship in a Globalising World conference, Nov "Ethos vs Ethics or the hierarchy of rights and values in schools the Irish case" Dr. Karin Fischer (University of Orléans, France) The diversification of the cultural and religious make-up of the Irish population in the last twenty years has put the Republic of Ireland on the map of globalisation just as much as its recent economic history. Analysing the apparent clash between homogeneity and diversity in the Irish case may be of particular help to highlight some of the existing tensions within school systems internationally. I will focus here on issues related to the transmission of values and the question of democratic rights in education, using the Republic of Ireland as a case study. The analysis will revolve specifically around the use and implications of the concept of school ethos as it has developed in the field of Irish education in the past twenty years, starting with a brief presentation of the recent developments in citizenship education in Ireland which will be useful as a counterpoint. In the Republic of Ireland, citizenship education, existing on paper, but mostly forgotten up to the mid-1990s (Jeffers, 2008, p. 12), found a new lease of life with the introduction of Civic, Social and Political Education as part of the core Junior Cycle curriculum in 1997 (cspe.ie; Department of Education and Science, 1996). This new syllabus promotes an egalitarian and inclusive concept of citizenship. Its authors have chosen to put human rights education at its core, and use it as the basis for discussions on morals, values and democratic rights and responsibilities. At both primary (alongside another subject entitled Social, Personal and Health Education) and secondary levels, there is a strong justice and equality perspective,

2 children being explicitly encouraged to explore unequal structures and relations in the school and local communities as well as at national and international levels (Waldron, 2004, p. 224). This combines in Ireland with a new educational discourse based on the principles of intercultural education. These recent developments may be seen as heralding a new era in the field of citizenship in schools in the Republic of Ireland, but a number of specialists of the subject have highlighted the fact that the goals of a progressive, active type of citizenship education with a focus on human rights and democracy are bound to be undermined in an environment which directly contradicts such a message (Devine, 2003; Jeffers & O Connor, 2008). In this respect, the Republic of Ireland would seem to be a case in point. It should be acknowledged to start with that existing schools and their teachers have made significant efforts to welcome children from varied cultural and religious backgrounds and that there have been genuine attempts on the part of the vast majority of teachers to adapt to the diversification of the Irish school population in a positive way. But the structural characteristics of the Irish education system and their ideological basis are likely to undermine the efforts of the bestmeaning of educational actors. The current Irish education system is commonly described as denominational and based on religious segregation. As the Catholic Church has remained the owner and manager of the vast majority of the so-called National primary schools in the Republic (which are otherwise mostly financed by the state), Catholic schools act as state schools for all intents and purposes. The increasing diversity of the school population since the mid-1990s, as a result of cultural evolutions within the Republic itself as well as of incoming migration, has highlighted the problematic aspect of the double nature and function of these schools. The successive Fianna Fáil governments of the last ten years or so have refused to initiate any wide-ranging review of the system, and have consistently reasserted the right of various patrons to impose or develop their own specific characteristic spirit or ethos in their schools. The state has presented itself as a neutral party, potentially facilitating but not initiating change, and insisting that schools remain essentially owned and managed by private patrons. Answering a question on the need for structural change in the

3 Dáil in 2006, Mary Hanafin, the then Minister for Education, answered: change is happening and it is being facilitated (Hanafin, 2006). In spite of the existence of a common public curriculum that all schools are required to follow, and in spite of the fact that a number of rules (such as the number of hours devoted to each subject for instance) imposed by the state apply to all schools, the intervention of the state in matters of management and in the definition of the overall objectives of each school would be seen by most religious patrons as an unacceptable form of interference. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin expressed his rejection of political or state interference in schools in his speech at the Conference on the Governance Challenge for Future Primary School Needs in June The existence of various forms of discrimination inherent to the denominational system has been highlighted by Irish sociologists (Lynch & Lodge, 2002; Deegan, Devine & Lodge, 2004; Lodge & Lynch, 2004), but the state has up to now refused to play an active role as a guarantor of fundamental rights and equal citizenship in the field of education in Ireland. Characteristically, in some of its publications, the Department of Education and Science refers to the need to minimise discrimination on the basis of culture, ethnicity, race or religion : In a society which is organised according to the principles of democracy and (cultural) pluralism, special care and attention should be paid to groups who are in the minority to ensure that discrimination on the basis of culture, ethnicity, race or religion is minimised and social integration becomes a reality (DES, 2000, p. 12, my underlining). Such a choice of words is revealing of the state s de facto acceptance of certain forms of discrimination. Over the last twenty years, the concept of "school ethos" has become allpervasive in both the political and educational discourse related to the school system in the Republic of Ireland. Even though the use of the word itself was avoided in the Education Act 1998 (Section 15.2.b.), the idea of a "characteristic spirit" defining each school is central to the vision of the Irish education system that is conveyed in the Act, which in fact proposes what appears to be a (wide) definition of the word ethos : the characteristic spirit of the school as determined by the cultural, educational, moral, religious, social, linguistic and spiritual values and traditions which

4 inform and are characteristic of the objectives and conduct of the school (Education Act, 1998, Section 15.2.b.). From this perspective, schools are seen as promoting a variety of specific cultural and moral values and traditions, which are first and foremost those of their owners or administrators, and school boards are required by the state to preserve and uphold the characteristic spirit of the school. In this definition, the understanding of the term seems to go beyond a purely religious dimension, but a brief history of the use of the word ethos in Ireland systematically points to the importance of this religious dimension. It should first be pointed out that the term itself has only become part of the Irish educational discourse since the beginning of the 1990s. It does not appear for instance in the index of Séamas Ó Buachalla s 1988 book on Irish education policy. In its first notable appearances, as in a 1992 article by Kevin Williams of the Mater Dei Institute, it specifically refers to the notion of religious ethos (Williams, 1992). In Ethos and Education in Ireland (2003), James Norman, also of the Mater Dei Institute, in fact deals essentially with the Catholic school ethos. In their contribution to the debate around the 1992 Green Paper on education (which represented the first step towards the 1998 Education Act), the Catholic authorities offered their own definition of the concept of school ethos: Ethos is actually the moral climate, or spirit which exists in any group or institution. Every education attempts to generate an atmosphere which will reflect the key characteristics of the educational enterprise (Joint Submission from the Irish Bishops and the Conference of Major Religious Superiors, 1993, p. 4. Quoted in O Flaherty, 1993, p. 68). Since the 1990s, some publications have sought to widen the potential meaning of the concept as it may relate more generally to the notion of school culture. In a collective work entitled School Culture and Ethos, the actual school ethos is presented by Luke Monahan, head of the Centre for Education Services at the Marino Institute of Education (which belongs to the Christian Brothers), as being the expression of "the lived reality of the values of the school", with the combined influence of the school staff, parents and pupils (Furlong & Monahan, 2000, p. xxi). Among the values making up the school ethos, Luke Monahan identifies, in the

5 following order (and with the following distinction) the values fixed by the owners of the school on the one hand, and those of the pupils, of the teaching staff, of parents and of supporting staff on the other hand. In this conception of school ethos, there is thus a dichotomy between the school patron and the people (children and adults) who make up the school community, with the patron implicitly having the upper hand in the hierarchy of values. More generally speaking, it is clear that the more common understanding of the word has remained closely linked with religion and the religious affiliation of school patrons, and Denis O Sullivan only refers to the notion of religious ethos in his detailed analysis of the cultural stakes of Irish education policy in the second half of the twentieth century (O Sullivan, 2005). In a reflection on the meaning of school ethos in 2000, Richard Clarke, Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath and Kildare, explained that he preferred the concept of faith-culture, because it makes the religious dimension explicit, while it remained implicit in the concept of ethos (Clarke, 2000, p. 165). The proponents of the denominational school system in Ireland, and specifically of the main type of school within this system (ie Catholic schools), finding themselves in a more defensive position as a result of the profound cultural evolutions in Irish society as a whole, have felt the need to formalise their conception of the Catholic school and give explicit shape to the nature and missions of these schools. The declining influence of the Catholic Church (Inglis, 1998 & 2003; McDonagh, 2003, p. 63), the very significant decline in the number of members of religious orders involved in education and their replacement by lay school heads and teachers, have led Catholic educators to try and articulate more fully what they see as the underlying value-system of the Catholic school, in an attempt to preserve its influence in schools and through educational actors who are themselves no longer part of the regular or secular orders. The setting up of Deeds of Trust or Deeds of Variation (that school boards would have to respect even in the event of a transfer of ownership to the state (Ó Loingsigh, 2001, p. 120)) has been another way for denominational schools to perpetuate their characteristic spirit. With a similar aim in mind, the Christian Churches in Ireland obtained a significant exemption to antidiscriminatory employment legislation in the fields of education and health when it was first introduced in 1998, and discrimination on the basis of religion has thus

6 remained legal in the Republic up to now (Section 37 of the Employment Equality Act, 1998, which has remained in the Equality Act of 2004). The contemporary development of the concept of school ethos, which has also been taken up and adopted by the various (mostly religious) interest groups involved in the education system, has thus taken place in an attempt to preserve both the main structural characteristics of the Irish school system and the transmission of a particular set of cultural and moral values. Catholic authors have stressed both the distinctive character and the moral dimension of the concept of ethos (although this specifically moral dimension is more or less present according to the various basic definitions of ethos 1 ). As Louis O Flaherty has remarked, even though the definition of ethos proposed to the government by the Catholic authorities in 1993 was meant to be all-encompassing, the main purpose of the Catholic hierarchy was to justify the perpetuation of the religious orientation of its schools (O Flaherty, 1993, p. 68). The proposed definition pointed to the improbable existence of a neutral ethos in any school, but O Flaherty also notes that the difficulty of achieving such an ethos as a characteristic of the moral climate of a school does not by itself justify the imposition of a particular type of moral or religious slant on both teachers and pupils. In the contemporary Irish social and educational context, such an imposition may in fact be assimilated to an abuse of power. The denominational nature of schools is obviously not the only element limiting or undermining the development of a democratic school culture. A number of other constraints exist and, in the Irish context, Timothy Murphy for example (following the reflexion of Denis O Sullivan) considers that the development of democratic citizenship has been impeded by both the theocentric and mercantile paradigms and their influence on education in the Republic of Ireland (Murphy, 2008, p. 32; O Sullivan, 2005). This notwithstanding, it remains true that the denominational nature of schools infringes upon principles of equality and freedom which are 1 The Cambridge Dictionary (2008 edition) gives the following definition of ethos, which is perhaps closer to the implicit understanding of the term in the Irish educational context, The set of beliefs, ideas, etc. about social behaviour and relationships of a person or a group ; while the definition to be found in the 2003 edition of the Collins Dictionary explicitly goes back to the Greek etymology (meaning habit or custom), with the distinctive character, spirit and attitudes of a people, culture, era, etc..

7 foundational prerequisites of the democratic project in education (Murphy,2008, p. 33, referring to the theses put forward by Paolo Freire and Maxine Greene on education for democracy). The legal imposition of a particular set of values and beliefs takes precedence over the respect for democratic principles which is also mentioned in the Education Act of 1998: the board shall (e) have regard to the principles and requirements of a democratic society and have respect and promote respect for the diversity of values, beliefs, traditions, languages and ways of life in society (Section 15.2.e.). As Anne Lodge notes, the denominational nature of the system does not allow for an equal recognition of difference, given that the values, practices and perspectives of the dominant group (in particular the Roman Catholic Church) are expressed as cultural and institutional norms in Irish primary education (Lodge, 2004, p. 32). In a memorandum addressed to Minister for Education Batt O Keeffe in September 2008, the various representatives of Church interests in the field of education in Ireland reasserted the idea that the characteristic spirit of Catholic schools should permeate all aspects of school life and insisted on the right of the Catholic school to articulate its own values, without apology or reserve, and to expect all who manage and work therein to respect and uphold the stated values of the school (quoted in Walshe, 2008). The school is here assimilated to its owners and administrators, and no consideration is given to the reality of the diversity of values and opinions of the people who constitute the actual school community, whether adults (teachers and parents) or children. By contrast, Fionnuala Kilfeather, who was then coordinator of the National Council of Parents, declared in a debate on the Education Bill in 1997 that, regardless of who owned the schools, the education taking place in them was not the property of any one group: it belongs to us, the citizens of Ireland (quoted in O Sullivan, 2005, p. 216). In a contribution to a conference on School Culture and Ethos held at the Marino Institute of Education in 2000, former INTO President Dónall Ó Loingsigh remarked that the imposition of a number of religious norms is a characteristic not only of the Catholic school but also of Anglican, Presbyterian, Muslim and Jewish schools, contending that, in such a context, religious minorities may only be tolerated and may never claim equal status (Ó Loingsigh, 2000, p. 230). Speaking at the same

8 conference, Billy Fitzpatrick, in charge of the education and research sector of the TUI (Teachers Union of Ireland, of which he is also former President), insisted on the need to adopt a wider democratic vision, precisely because of the limits to equality of status inherent to the denominational system. He postulated that the dominant feature of a school s culture and ethos in a democratic society should be inclusivity and a commitment to democratic values. Keeping this in mind, he posited, in the name of TUI, that only schools and educational organisations which operate under the principles of non-selectivity, co-education, multi- or non-denominational status, life-long learning and democratic accountability, can claim to project a truly inclusive ethos (Fitzpatrick, 2000, p. 238). The widespread adoption of the notion of school ethos to characterise and justify the distinctive character and message of various types of schools in Ireland has served to perpetuate a hierarchical vision of educational rights which gives precedence to organised interest groups over individuals and to adults over children, at a time when the democratic deficit of most Irish schools has been increasingly questioned within the system itself. As Devine, Lodge and Deegan (2004, p. 246) note, given the majority representation of the Trustee [on the school board], as enshrined in the Education Act, the discordant voices of others can be silenced if it is perceived that they threaten the dominant ethos of the school. This characteristic spirit or ethos is sometimes seen in Ireland as a set of cultural and moral prerequisites without which the Irish school system as a whole would somehow lose its soul. The fear of a moral or even ideological vacuum in the absence of specific religious values in schools has been repeatedly expressed by Church leaders especially. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has warned against the danger of an ideological battle between politicians if the educational field was not occupied by the various religions (Martin, 2008), while Richard Clarke of the Church of Ireland has wondered aloud about the possibility of an ideology-free education in relation to the idea of a non-denominational or secular school system (Clarke, 2000, p. 164). Both have chosen to ignore or dismiss the concept of civic or social morality which has been put forward as a potential alternative in the Irish educational field by Garret FiztGerald among others. In a speech addressed to members of the National

9 Association of Principals and Deputy Principals, the former Prime Minister insisted on the necessity for teachers to found their vision of education on ethical principles such as mutual respect and not on the recourse to a traditional autority seeking to impose its own rules (FitzGerald, 2007). For Walter Feinberg, Professor of philosophy of education at the University of Illinois, the idea that moral norms may only exist within distinct communal frameworks (or be communally bounded ) is highly problematic in the context of a multicultural society. In the field of education, this claim sets the communal interest over that of the child while simultaneously ignoring the fact that, in a liberal society, the freedom to assert communal identity exists within a wider context of democratic rights and responsibilities. Once members of a cultural community acknowledge that they are part of a multicultural society, then the communal interest cannot form the only basis through which education contributes to the formation of self (as cited in Gallagher, 2004, p. 151). Feinberg identifies the responsibility of society to allow children an autonomy in their choices and the right of children to this freedom as being among the democratic rights and responsibilities which should be respected by communities in a democratic society. In the sense that it gives precedence to democratic rights and responsibilities (including those of children) over communal ideological frameworks, such a vision indirectly echoes the writings of Émile Durkheim on moral education, in which he considered that identification with a national moral code could only be a step in the process of social and moral evolution, which would, by necessity, lead on to a broader self-identification with a human rights-based morality that was the ultimate measure of citizenship (as cited in Tormey, 2006, p. 314). It is only by using this human rights-based morality or ethics as a founding principle that one may avoid both the narrow confines of communal codes and practices and the dangers of cultural and moral relativism. An educational entreprise on such a basis would seek to enhance the capacity of children to think by themselves and make their own informed choices, and would thus respect the right of children to

10 freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as set out in Article 14 of the International Convention on the Rights of Children of Within this context, one could finally argue that the concept of school ethos, with its insistence on the perpetuation of certain communal identities and interests, has in fact become an obstacle to the development of a genuinely ethical approach of education based on children s rights and democratic principles in the Republic of Ireland. Somewhat paradoxically, the new citizenship education curriculum, with its emphasis on human rights and equality, but also on active and project-based learning methodologies, points precisely to such a development. In this sense, the education system in the Republic of Ireland provides a good illustration of both the more traditional vision of schools as legitimately transmitting or even imposing communal sets of values and the more progressive attempts at putting into practice the principles of education for democracy. Bibliographical references: Clarke, R. (Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath and Kildare) (2000). On Faith, Culture and Giant Pandas A Church of Ireland Perspective on Trusteeship and School Ethos. In Furlong, K. & Monahan, L. (Eds.), School Culture and Ethos Cracking the Code ( ). Dublin: Marino Institute of Education. Department of Education and Science (1996). Junior Certificate Civic, Social and Political Education Syllabus. Dublin: Stationery Office. Department of Education and Science (2000). Information Booklet for Schools on Asylum Seekers. Dublin: Stationery Office. Deegan, J., Devine, D & Lodge, A. (Eds.). (2004). Primary Voices Equality, Diversity and Childhood in Irish Primary Schools. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration. Devine, D. (2003). Children, Power and Schooling. Stoke on Trent (UK): Trentham Books. Devine, D., Lodge, A & Deegan, J. (2004). Activating voices through practice: democracy, care and consultation in the primary school. In Deegan, J., Devine, D &

11 Lodge, A. (Eds.), Primary Voices: Equality, Diversity and Childhood in Irish Primary Schools ( ). Dublin, Institute of Public Administration. Durkheim, E. (1961). Moral Education: a study in the theory and application of the sociology of education. New York: Free Press. Education Act, Employment Equality Act, Equality Act, Feinberg, W. (1998). Common Schools/Uncommon Identities: national unity and cultural difference. Yale: Yale University Press. FitzGerald, G. (2007, May). Civic republicanism: Vision and Values in 21st Century Ireland. Speech at the Kilmainham Symposium on Vision and Values in 21st Century Ireland: What Ireland Needs from its Education System, 9 March 2007, reproduced in Le Chéile, Journal of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals, nº 1, Fitzpatrick, B. (2000). School Culture and Ethos A Teachers Union of Ireland Perspective. In Furlong, K. & Monahan, L. (Eds.), School Culture and Ethos Cracking the Code ( ). Dublin: Marino Institute of Education. Furlong, C. & Monahan, L. (Eds.). (2000). School Culture and Ethos Cracking the Code. Dublin: Marino Institute of Education. Gallagher, T. (2004). Education in Divided Societies. Basingstoke (UK): Palgrave Macmillan. Hanafin, M. (Minister for Education). (2006, February 15). Parliamentary Debates, Dáil Éireann, Vol Inglis, T. (1998). Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland. Dublin: University College Dublin Press. Inglis, T. (2003). Catholic Church, Religious Capital and Symbolic Domination. In Bøss, M. & Maher, E. (Eds.), Engaging Modernity: Readings of Irish Politics, Culture and Literature at the Turn of the Century (43-70). Dublin: Veritas. Jeffers, G. (2008). Some challenges for citizenship education in the Republic of Ireland. In G. Jeffers and U. O Connor (Eds.), Education for Citizenship and Diversity in Irish Contexts (11-23). Dublin: Institute of Public Administration. Joint submission from the Irish Bishops and the Conference of Major Religious Superiors (1993). Dublin.

12 Gerry Jeffers, G. & O Connor, U. (Eds.). (2008). Education for Citizenship and Diversity in Irish Contexts. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration. Law, S. (2006). The War for Children s Minds. London: Routledge. Lodge, A. & Lynch, K. (Eds.). (2004). Diversity at School. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration for the Equality Authority. Anne Lodge, A. (2004). Denial, tolerance or recognition of difference? The experiences of minority belief parents in the denominational primary system. In Deegan, J, Devine, D. & Lodge, A. (Eds.), Primary Voices : Equality, Diversity and Childhood in Irish Primary Schools (17-36). Dublin: Institute of Public Administration. Lynch, K. & Lodge, A. (2002). Equality and Power in Schools London: Routledge Falmer. Martin, D. (Archbishop) (2008, June 27). Speech at the Conference on the Governance Challenge for Future Primary School Needs, Dublin. McDonagh, E. (2003). Church-State Relations in an Independent Ireland. In Mackey, J.P. & McDonagh, E. (Eds.), Religion and Politics in Ireland at the Turn of the Millennium (58-72). Blackrock, Columba, Murphy, T. (2008, March). Democratic schooling practices in the Republic of Ireland: the gaps between the rhetoric and reality. Irish Educational Studies, vol. 27, nº 1, Norman, J. (2003). Ethos and Education in Ireland. New York: Peter Lang. Ó Buachalla, S. (1988). Education Policy in Twentieth Century Ireland. Dublin: Wolfhound Press. O Flaherty, L. (1993). Religious control of schooling in Ireland: some policy issues in review. Irish Educational Studies Annual Conference Proceedings. Ó Loingsigh, D. (2000). Barriers to intercultural education. In Furlong, K. & Monahan, L. (Eds.), School Culture and Ethos Cracking the Code ( ). Dublin: Marino Institute of Education. Ó Loingsigh, D. (former President of the Irish National Teachers Organisation). (2001). Intercultural Education and the School Ethos. In Farrell, F. & Watt, P. (Eds.), Responding to Racism in Ireland ( ). Dublin: Veritas Publications. O Sullivan, D. (2005). Cultural Politics and Irish Education since the 1950s. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration.

13 Tormey, R. (2006). The construction of national identity through primary school history: the Irish case. British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol. 27, nº 3, Waldron, F. (2004). Making the Irish: Identity and Citizenship in the Primary Curriculum. In C. Sugrue (ed.), Curriculum and Ideology: Irish Experiences, International Perspectives ( ). Dublin: The Liffey Press. John Walshe, J. (2008, September 9). Church demands key role in new secondary schools. Irish Independent. In his article, Walshe quoted a confidential memorandum by the Bishops Commission on Education, the association of Catholic managers of schools and the Conference of the Religious in Ireland. Williams, K. (1992). Religious ethos and state schools. Doctrine and Life, vol. 42 ( ). The journal is published by Dominican Publications.