National Conference of Priests of Ireland

September 21st 1993

Theme of Conference 'A Learning Church'
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EDUCATION AND THE NEW RELIGION

Dara Molloy s.m.
3229 words

My critique of the Green Paper on Education is based on a thesis I have about Irish society and religion, so bear with me while I first expound the thesis before I get on to talking about the Green paper.

Most of you, I'm sure, will agree that priests are losing their power in Ireland. I'm not talking about their power over a management board or on a local committee. I'm talking about the mysterious power they used to have. It was a form of magic. This power was exercised for example on my mother when she was a child. She would see the priest coming on the footpath and her instinct was to cross to the other side rather than pass close by him. The awe in which the priest was held was also expressed in the flurry of preparation that took place when a priest would be coming to the house. When he visited the home he was brought into the parlour or front room and served tea with silverware and good china.

In my own lifetime, I have noticed how the priest has lost his magic! When the Mass was in Latin and the priest did mysterious things with his back to the people; and altar servers had to wear white gloves because they were not allowed to touch the sacred vessels; and incense wafted through the Church after Sunday benediction, all of these things created an aura, a sense of mystery and of another world, and gave the priest a magic and a power of knowledge and mediation in the eyes of the people. But now that is all gone. The priest in Ireland today is being reduced to just another Joe Soap. His star is falling. It may still have some distance to fall, but its heading to the very bottom, the pits!

What has been happening to priests in particular has been happening to religion in general. For a great proportion of people in Ireland today, not just young people, there is no kick in religion. Perhaps they continue to go to the Church on Sunday or perhaps they have stopped. But either way it is no big deal. Mass contains no electricity, no buzz, and nothing else about their religion switches them on either. Their religion basically does not influence their lives one way or another. Their energy for living comes from somewhere else, and the symbols and rituals which express the meaning and purpose of their lives are no longer to be found in Church buildings.

Why is this happening?
In my view, it is not that people have rejected religion. People long for salvation in some form or other and search for it wherever they think they can find it. They want happiness, contentment, forgiveness, healing, and they want to escape the fear of death and all it holds for them. They also desire ritual, meaningful ritual that will add depth to their lives. They still want symbols that will be rich containers for their hopes. They look for magic, for the mysterious that gives them a glimpse into a world beyond. They look for these things wherever they can find them. If they no longer come for these things to the Catholic Church it may be that they are finding more satisfactory sources elsewhere.

And this is my thesis, that precisely these needs are being addressed in a new religion among us. It is a nameless religion run by faceless men but nonetheless a religion that requires worship, beliefs and practices. The spirits of men and women have been sucked into it as if it was a vacuum cleaner.

This new religion is being run by faceless men, the men who hold the power behind the multinational corporations, the large banks, and the political parties. These men are not elected, are not visible and are not accountable but they handle vast budgets and they pull mighty strings. They have promoted a nameless religion that is more and more getting the whole world and everybody living on it into its grip.

The method is to offer new ways of attaining salvation to people, replacing the no longer attractive old ways. They present a vision and a promise that is too tempting to resist. The new ways are wrapped in secular language to cloak their spiritual power. But nonetheless they are ways of the soul. They attract and draw people's spirit.

People are drawn now, not by the priest's words, but by advertising. Advertising is the great evangeliser. It presents before people the dream and the way to attain it. A person can become beautiful simply by buying a special brand of skin-cream. But behind the silly 30 second ad is a far from silly all-pervasive ethos which says "Buy and be Happy" or "Buy and be whatever you want to be". Implicit in this message is that money is the means and that therefore the heart of this vision for ourselves and for society as a whole is money. Money will get us there, where we dream of going and where we want to go.

This religion makes no bones about its promises: it promises prosperity, power, and status and it produces enough people with these attainments to assure others that they too can attain it and that it is within their grasp.

This new religion puts everybody on a one-dimensional scale, like a ladder, and then lures one into seeing life predominantly in this way and beginning to climb the ladder. The promise of this new religion is epitomised in the National Lottery. The Lottery shows one a point unimaginably high on the scale and then promises that if one does certain things or behaves in a certain way one could be at that point. The promise of this religion is money in the context of what one could do with it in this modern age. With money comes the promise of power, wealth, and status. This is the salvation offered.

What are the rituals of this new religion?
Friday and Saturday shopping - replacing Sunday Mass
Visiting the bank manager - replacing going to your confessor
Watching the news at home with the family - replacing the family rosary
(and the sports results - replacing the Angelus)
The TV itself has replaced the flickering light of the Sacred Heart lamp
Receiving your weekly pay cheque (or dole cheque) - replacing weekly communion
Reading the paper - replacing your personal prayer time.
Your leather wallet of credit cards - replacing the old prayer book full of leaflets and anniversary cards.

Notice how Bank Holidays have replaced Church Holydays as the day off work. Because this religion does not claim to be a religion it can move in where religion is pushed out. The Campaign for the Separation of Church and State will speed up this process and allow this new religion to completely take over all public life.

The salvific words of this new religion are familiar to us all. They include words like :-

development growth technology progress education

These words and what they stand for represent "the good". They are the dogmas of this religion. They cannot be questioned. Try suggesting to Bertie Ahern that Ireland introduce a policy of no growth over the next few years. Or suggest to the Ministry of Agriculture that Irish farmers would be better off without modern technology. Teagasc are finding it hard enough to cope with the concept of "organic farming" as it is! Each of these words is full of promise and together they bring hope to all men and women, a hope for the future.

And this religion uses magic also. Technology is the magic of this modern religion. Flick the switch and its on your screen; press the accelerator and the car takes off like a rocket; switch on the computer and the world and its brains is at your fingertips. The material world has replaced the spiritual world and none of the ancient religions can now compete with this magic. It is spell-binding and that is precisely what it does. Technology is the spell which binds people into this new religion.

In this environment, with its powerful evangelisation through advertising, with the magic it works through modern technology, and with the hold it has over the people through the money institutions, it is no wonder that we priests have lost our grip, or that the Catholic Church no longer gives people a buzz.

PART 2 - A LOOK AT THE GREEN PAPER

The Green Paper on Education, written and rewritten by consecutive Ministers for Education, contains a greater commitment to this new religion than ever before. Within its pages, 250 of them, you will not find the vision of Jesus Christ for the coming of the Kingdom. On the contrary, you will find a vision that is completely in contrast with it. The vision in the Green Paper is for material prosperity. Education has become a key factor in the inculcation of this dream for material prosperity into the hearts of next generations, and its main objective is to prepare these young people to fit the roles that have been prepared for them so that this dream can become a reality.

If material prosperity is the destination envisaged in the Green Paper, then Economic Growth and Industrial Development are the two rails on which we will journey. The carriages that will transport us are Technology and Enterprise. If we look along a map of the route, to be found carefully laid out in the Green Paper, the main points along the way are: Productivity, Efficiency, Resources, Management, Executives, Accountability, Structures, Quality Control, Assessment, and Planning. These are the words that come up again and again in the document.

This vision of course is now prevalent throughout the world, and countries have got used to seeing themselves on a one-dimensional scale which marks them off as more developed or less developed. But throughout the world also the bad fruits of this vision are becoming apparent.

The world is only slowly waking up to the realisation that the dream has turned into a nightmare and that the nightmare is happening not in dreamland but in reality. The Rio Summit spent most of its energy avoiding facing that nightmarish reality. I am referring here not just to the environmental disaster that continues to worsen worldwide even as we sit here, but also to the other catastrophic effects of this religion of 'progress' which has taken over the world.

Alongside the physical pollution, which we can see and sense, is the psychological pollution which fills peoples minds with junk and which spreads the same junk 'mono-junk' all over the world: junk music, junk TV soaps, junk writing, junk food. Alongside the destruction of biodiversity (where species of plants, insects and animals are being wiped out at an accelerating and unprecedented rate and where only certain species of plants and animals are being actively propagated) is the destruction of cultural diversity and culture itself. Languages, ways of living, belief systems, crafts, sources of wisdom, types of music, dancing, art, ceremonial, customs, methods of healing - all are being reduced to one way and one way only. Where they are protected they are being encased in heritage parks, museums, and shows for the tourists. Now everybody has to drink Coke and watch Dallas or Neighbours.

Although the brakes are being lightly touched on environmental issues, no government has yet faced the issue at other levels, not least education. Meanwhile the present Irish government proposes in its Green Paper a further cranking up of this death-dealing machine. Schools now are to promote enterprise; a new compulsory subject is to be introduced called Enterprise and Technology Studies; schools are to be streamlined to produce a quality product.

Young people, we are promised, by being cocooned in our new super efficient schools will emerge butterfly style as specimens of this new entrepreneurial, enterprising and technological culture. The faster we can hurtle along these tracks in the direction of economic expansion, the sooner will our difficulties be over. We will reach the promised destination of prosperity, and problems such as unemployment, poverty and inequality will have vanished.

There is no soul, as such, in the young person as understood by the Green Paper. All young people can be treated the same ó to the same subjects, the same teachers, the same curricula, with only minor variations, as one might vary the treatment one would give to different qualities or types of material in a factory. The factory model for school, around since the foundation of modern schooling, continues to be applied within the Green Paper. Young people are there to be worked on, to have things done to them. So they will be 'develope', 'equipped', 'prepared', 'educated'. This is the conveyor-belt approach. As the young person, or raw material, passes through the system, he will 'pick up skills', 'receive information', 'be exposed to subjects', 'absorb knowledge'. The Green Paper prescribes a new compulsory subject for all pupils ó Enterprise and Technology Studies. In this and the continuation of other compulsory subjects, the Green Paper ignores any desires of the young people themselves.

The Green Paper has a lot to say about assessment. It forms part of a chapter called 'Quality Assurance'. Again the language is that of factory production. The assessment process will try to be more accurate and more efficient. But in the end of the day, young people will continue to be assessed and graded like products from a factory, prepared for market. The young people are being viewed as raw material whose education will give them added-value, turning them into marketable commodities, if not our most valuable export.

The education system itself is being described and planned for more and more in the language of production and consumption. The education system produces ëconsumable productsí. In the final chapter of the Green Paper, international education is described as a ësignificant growth industryí. The language of administering this system is now the language of factory management - school principals are to become chief executives, examinations are part of 'quality control', and the school produces a 'product' which is marketable.

I now tell a story about a young boy called Padraig. Padraig is very bright. He does well at school, is in the top stream, but the subjects he is studying do not interest him. During his school holidays, he discovers another place where people are living in a way that appeals to him. He arranges with his parents to spend his school holidays there. Now he has found what he wants and each time he comes he learns more. Finally he wants to leave school, even though he is only 14. This causes a dilemma for his family.

If Padraig had lived around the 6th or 7th century it is quite possible that he would have gone to a Celtic monastery to learn all he needed to know. In the Celtic monasteries of that time we have a model of education far different from the one presented in the Green Paper. It is a model that is still apt for the Church today. The essence of the Celtic monasteries of the time was the deliberate coming together of certain people to a certain place to live in a certain way. Celtic monasteries were places where people deliberately tried to live in a way that matched a vision or a dream they shared among them. We know that in Celtic monasteries the finest of artistic and academic achievements were reached. Their lifestyle was a whole or holistic way of living and because these communities were open communities, i.e. people could come and live among them for a short or long period, they were rich reservoirs for those who were thirsty for knowledge, for skills, or for wisdom. We know that many young men of the age of 14 or thereabouts, Padraig's age, went to these places precisely to learn and be educated.

These Celtic monasteries became centres of learning not because they were founded as schools but because people, especially young people, were drawn to them and wanted to learn. People became teachers because they were approached by eager students. In our folklore we can find great stories about these places and the saints who lived in them:- St Ita, who took so many young men into her monastery that she became known as the Mother of the Saints of Ireland; St Finian, whose monastery at Clonard, despite the fact that it was burned down more than ten times, became the most well-known place of learning in Ireland and Finian himself became known as the Father of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland; and Clonmacnoise that is said to have had more than 5,000 students.

The Celtic Church model of education is the gardening model. Using the gardening model, one can think of the young person as a ripe seed that has dropped onto the soil. The seed contains within itself its own lifeforce which will direct its growth and its life from beginning to end. If the seed is transplanted into a garden that is cultivated, it has a better chance of growing healthily according to this plan within it. The function of the gardener, who will require considerable skills, is to create the overall optimum environment for this particular plant. His job will be to match the requirements for sunlight with those for water, for nourishment, for shelter, for protection and for space.

The garden model of education respects the lifeforce, the impetus for learning and for growth to wisdom and wholeness within each individual young person, and it sees its role as being to provide an appropriate environment which inevitably will be some form of community environment. This is a model of education that is very appropriate for the Church.

The Green Paper on Education presents only the factory model of education. It does not envisage any possibility of young people being given the facility to choose to learn in this other way. It does not allow for the possibility that places of learning could operate in this way. And it makes no concessions to anyone who might think of other ways in which young people might fruitfully learn - there are no concessions to home-schoolers, no concessions to alternative schools, and no concessions to schools that might operate from a different philosophy, like Steiner schools.

The Green Paper continues the promotion of the illusion upon which modern society is based. This is the illusion that all of us can possess material things in almost limitless measure. It is the illusion that we can all be measured on a scale from zero to a hundred, whether that scale is 'Intelligence' or 'GNP' or anything else and that our placing on the scale will be an indication of where our placing is in reality. It is the illusion that the answer to any problem can always be found in money and material things.

I see no indication whatsoever that there is any likelihood that Padraig would be better catered for under any new structures or ideas proposed in the Green Paper. Meanwhile, the present system continues to rob Padraig and many other young people of their souls. The system for Padraig and these young people is soul-destroying - these words 'soul-destroying' accurately describe the reality. Our present education system, including the reforms proposed in the present Green Paper, is an elaborate ritual performed on young people and on society as a whole to condition them into accepting the dream of 'progress' and 'development' and to suck them into a way of life which will serve this dream and those who benefit from it. To me it is anathema.

However, I would like to end on a positive note. As is often the case, where you find the poison you will also find the cure for it. Within the Green Paper is a small paragraph which indicates that within the Department of Education somewhere, the insights necessary for a radically different approach to education are already present. On page 116 -117, five principles are laid down for the appropriate way for adults to interact with young people. These are:-

1. Create a non-judgemental atmosphere . (This implies no threat of examination or assessment and no imposed streaming).
2. Allow the voluntary association of young people with adults. (This implies that young people would choose who their teachers would be).
3. Involve adults and young people in an equal partnership. (This implies that responsibility and decision-making would be shared)
4. Involve the young people in determining the content and direction of courses and programmes. (This implies that young people themselves will chose what they want to learn and how they want to learn it).
5. Encourage the constructive intervention by adults in the lives of individual young people. (This implies a timetable and adult roles which are neither rigid nor crammed with preplanned activity).

Unfortunately, the Green Paper sees these five principles as being relevant only to 'Youth Work'. However, it seems to me that all work with young people is 'Youth Work' and I do not see why these five principles could not apply right across the board. Schools would then be very different places. I would keep that paragraph and scrap the rest of the Green Paper.


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