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Intercultural Education in a Divided School System
The further fact that the Minister of Education was Martin McGuinness, one of the key figures in Sinn Fein, merely added another level of political tension to any decisions he took. 9.
Conclusion
Each of these different examples points to a problem in the contribution education might play as Northern Ireland struggles to find a way out of the violence that lasted for over a quarter century. As noted at the start of this paper, Northern Ireland has an education system that is characterised by divisions, between Protestant and Catholic, between social classes, and, to an extent, between genders. The main justification of the religious separation has been based on a claim that minorities should have the right to maintain their own schools, especially in a society where a minority faces discrimination in employment, and on a version of pluralism which emphasises the legitimacy of difference. This paper has argued that the justifications cast the education system in Northern Ireland in consociational terms, that is as a system of mass segmentation and elite accommodation. However, each of the examples looked at in the paper of education initiatives that have been pursued in the period since the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement have shown little evidence of the accommodatory side of the consociational claims. Rather, the more evident characteristic of the debates has been the pursuit of separate interests and the striking absence of any discourse of a common good in education. This is despite the widespread hope at the outset of the devolved arrangements, that education might provide the basis for a superordinate goal around which most political interests could unite. It would seem, therefore, that the legitimation of difference alone is not sufficient, but that some stronger basis for promoting a discourse of a common good may be needed if education is to take on a more positive role. Hitherto the main vehicle for this has been assumed to be the Integrated schools, although this is hampered by the zero-sum response which is normally provoked whenever any new developments in Integrated education take place. Nevertheless, there are good grounds for arguing that the contexts provided by separate schools limit the extent to which they can contribute to the promotion of positive community relations. Wenger’s work on communities of learning highlights the importance of developing a clear identity and strong core processes in order to establish a ‘community of learning’, but he goes on to suggest that such a community will stagnate if its focus remains entirely internal: in order to develop learning it will become necessary for the community to develop porous boundaries so that its members can come into contact with different assumptions and ways of thinking, for it is from these that the basis for challenge, and new learning, will develop (Wenger, 2000). One possible way to develop these porous boundaries is to build on Varshey’s (2002) idea that ethnic harmony is promoted, or disharmony constrained, if there exist networks of interconnection within civic society, with institutionalised linkages being more effective that quotidian, or more informal, linkages. The proposal emerging from the review of the selective system for collaborating collegiates of post-primary schools might provide one basis for creating those type of positive interdependencies between separate schools. Another possibility could be provided by a realignment of teacher education and a renewed commitment to seeing this are of work as a high priority in the training of teachers.
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