Sunday, January 29, 2006

Schools 'twinned' to beat bigotry

This BBC story relates to the Scottish Executive's launch of further action against Sectarianism in Scotland. The Executive's own news release gives more detail. The full 'Action Plan on Tackling Sectarianism in Scotland' is online, and focuses on four areas: Education, Sport, Faith, and Marches and Parades.

One view:

Religious bigotry, principally between Protestants and Catholics and mainly in the West of Scotland, is a very unattractive feature of Scottish life. But it touches the lives of most Scots hardly at all, and is probably in a long-term decline as 'multi-cultural life' becomes more the norm across Scotland and the hard-line bigots die out.

Educational and other initiatives to address sectarianism have been around for some time, trying to change attitudes. For example, the Nil By Mouth campaign in Scottish football is well-established and works to reduce the incidence of intolerant individuals spoiling the pleasure of football for other people. And Learning and Teaching Scotland were behind an anti-sectarian education web resource in 2005.

One part of the action plan is to have more 'twinning' of catholic and non-denominational schools, to organise more joint events that bring children together from different communities.
The clear question that follows that is: why not take the logical next step and stop having separate schools labelled 'catholic' and 'non-denominational'? Create a reformed education system and let the young people truly mix and learn to live together.

1 comment:

Bobby said...

The original link was posted by me - but the text was Nicks (although I agree with most of it).