From Professor W. H. C. Frend. Sir: The weakest part
of the White Paper on Northern Ireland Is indeed it's omission of any specific mention of education, but I believe an attempt to impose secularisation on schools woild be unacceptable, particularly to the Roman Catholics. The Burges Commission also shied off integration, and so we are left where we were, with rival schools teaching rival ideologies stoking up the flames for the future.
There is, however, an alternative approach which has been tried with success on the Continent. The end of the war left West Germany with roughly 50 per cent Evangelical and 50 per cent Catholics, with a strong Catholic predominance in Bavaria and the Rhineland. Confessional schools have, however, been accepted as such, and instead of abolishing them an effort has been made to harmonise the syllabuses in religious knowledge taught in state and Catholic schools. Interestingly enough, the initiative came from the Catholic side. The starting point was historical religion. My department was invited to cooperate and an agreed syllabus for the teaching of early church history is now being considered at Strasbourg to form the basis of teaching this subject throughout EEC.
In Western Scotland we have religious issues similar to, but not quite so intense and polarised as in Ulster, and here too, we have the curse of segregated education. We are attempting gradually but surely and with the Foodwill of the leaders of all religious traditions to lay the foundation for future harmonisation of syllabuses within the framework of segregated schools. It is better for children to identify with their own traditions in school than reflect these in rival gangs on the playground of a single large, impersonal comprehensive establishment.
Two additional factors encourage us. First, the raising of the school leaving age to sixteen will enable religious issues to be taught to a far greater depth. than before. Secondly, the vast amount of new, interesting, material, from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Celtic Church at last enable the Bible and post Biblical history to be taught as a challenging and relevant subject.
What is needed is a more modern approach to religious knowledge as a subject. What is being attempted with success on the Continent should at least provide a guideline for the United Kingdom. If secularisation and integration are both out as resolutions in Ulster, why not give the third alternative a chance?
W. H. C. Frend The Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, Glasgow University
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