21.05.2012
Archbishop’s Address to Dublin and Glendalough National Schools Patron’s Day
The Dublin and Glendalough Patron’s Day took place in the Clarion Hotel, Liffey Valley, and addressed the theme: ‘Challenging Times for our Schools’. A range of topics were covered during the day including school self–evaluation and an overview of changes in the recruitment process. Participants also had an opportunity to discuss issues facing schools under Protestant patronage.
Addressing the gathering, Archbishop Michael Jackson said:
In speaking with those who are at the forefront of education in the National Schools of these United Dioceses, I want first to thank you for the work you do daily and also to express my hope that it remains enjoyable. Every time I meet and talk about education, it is a conversation in crisis mode. It is also, from what I can see, a conversation about something which is a moving target. My fear is that we might too easily be sucked into seeing education as a problem area and nothing else; and therefore we might prevent ourselves from seeing beyond the problem. Of course, I do realize that the problems are real and dig deep. But I also realize that teachers are a gift to education and I never want such a perspective to be lost.
The society to which we belong has conveniently separated things which matter in such a way as to make them incompatible and indeed contradictory of one another. This is a false distinction. In the case of Church of Ireland National Schools, in the Ireland of today, it now focuses on a sense of religion and a sense of pluralism. This is not a new insight. I have said it time and again and, I am sure, so have you: Pluralism is not the invention, nor indeed the property, of a secularizing agenda. These two ideas are quite different and distinct. I would go further and say that a predatory secularism seeks to camp out in pluralism – because, as discerning secularists know all too well, pluralism needs diversity to give it life. But, as in any walk of life, not all secularists are discerning. In our combative and polemical Irish context, such diversity means: religion. We are surrounded and suffused by religion and I can understand why people want a break from this sense of heaviness of religion.
The sibling of pluralism is inclusiveness. This too is a sadness and a disappointment to many contemporary secularists. However, we in the Church of Ireland have never been ashamed, nor should we be, of an ethos which is pluralist and religious, in a generous sense and in an open direction. My point is that, as National School teachers, you, as no others, are the custodians and the guardians of this dynamic combination. We happen to call it: ethos. And too many people now rubbish it. The world still contains quaint people like me who have had a Classical education. I happen, by chance, to know that the word: ethos originally has nothing to do with morality or behaviour but with: pasturage. Its first use in European literature has to do with where horses graze and it is in Homer’s Iliad. This information is largely incidental and may seem to be nothing but antiquarianism but where it leads us is important. Being safe enough to eat grass in your habitat – that is ethos. Letting yourself come and go in relation to the things which nurture you – that is ethos. Having the space to play and to exercize – that is ethos. These are the relaxed perspectives which we need to keep to the forefront of our minds as we are locked in combat for the preservation and the enhancement of the concept of the Church of Ireland National School.
Why? – you ask. There are two models of discipleship – and discipleship is being a pupil – in the Gospels: Follow me and Come and see. The first is an expression of trust; the second is an expression of invitation. Both are at the core of the Church of Ireland ethos. Equally intrinsic to that ethos are you, the teachers. Using, as is our entitlement, the Constitutional provision, we entrust to our teachers our children for the majority of their waking hours and for the most formative part of their day. Trust and invitation lead us to an openness of generosity which we have always regarded as being vital in the nurturing of generous citizenship. And this is the longer–term purpose of education. To describe it as denominational, and to skew this term to mean: repressive, is, in fact, to miss the point. It is Christian with a special focus on the things which matter within the Church of Ireland. It is parochial without losing the perspective of community. It is faith–based without losing the critical entitlement to ask questions which religions do not and cannot easily answer. It is broad without being shallow and it is probing without being heavy. This is the sector which is coming under threat. And the threat is there precisely because it looks as if it offers something which we can take for granted as being part of the air we breathe. This is a mistake. We need to make the case and we need to show that it has worked, does work and will work into the future. I am as aware as is the next person that the Government and the Department of Education and Skills are under threat and scrutiny. I am not the first or the last to describe our country as devoid of sovereignty or of solvency. We must co–operate with both. But the children in our care must not be the pawns in this economic and political game of cat and mouse.
The more privatized the expression of religious belief and practice become, the greater the need for National Schools. They keep to the forefront of the experience of children the fact that religious living is trustworthy, friendly and human. They show that religion is not frightened to be a weekday activity. But, most of all, they show that the ethos is here to stay, not in a reduced curricular sense but in a way that is holistic – part of the air children and teachers breathe and part of the grass on which they graze.
In a pivotal and strategic way, you as the teachers hold the key which unlocks the door of this experience. And you do so for the pupils, the staff and, increasingly, for the parents. It is you who know how to live this life with an instinctive ease and normality. It is you who enable ethos to be part and parcel of the school day, week and year.
My final request is this: Please tell me the things which make it work!