Integrated Apartheid

Or in Northern Irish schools: "Protestants on one side of the school, Catholics on the other"

The scale of the ineptocracy that we know as the Northern Ireland Assembly grows ever more expensive and incompetent.

Despite being a generally accepted fact by everyone on the planet that sending Northern Irish kids to religiously separated schools is a BAD IDEA the powers that be at Stormont have decided that they know best and will build expensive new campuses to house SEPARATE schools.

A curious move for a group tasked with the goal of creating a shared future.

It would appear they interpret this as 'the very very distant future'.

Sinn Féin, curiously, are seemingly quite keen on keeping the kiddies apart.

So much for 'Ourselves Alone', it's more of a case of 'Ourselves and themuns in the other class rooms down the corridor'.

So, your humble narrator has had a little look to see if there are any valid reasons for supporting this apartheid.

Long story short, 'NO'.

However, let's go through some of the more interesting snippets.:

"Sinn Féin believes in secular education and in multi-denominational schools..." - which is why there is no mention of removing mono-denominational schools from the state system?

"We would like to see the same resources now being given to integrated schools also being given to Irish language-medium schools" - Well, maybe they might, if Sinn Fein would leave the Irish language alone and thus help remove the perception that Irish is for republicans only.

"The past absence of Irish history teaching and the ban-ning and neglect of the Irish language in the school cur-riculum has been at least as responsible for contributing to the problems of society in the North as the absence of integrated education." - 
Interesting point. How is history taught in mixed schools at present? How much does it differ from Sinn Féin's version of history that EVERYTHING is the fault of the British or the hardline Unionist version that suggests 'everything will be all right if you'd leave it all alone'....

In mixed schools there is no reason why Irish can't be taught. Indeed, it'll have access to a wider audience with the other half of Northern Ireland being exposed to the language. This would also help defuse any future potential confrontations regarding Irish sign-age around the country.

Damn it, make it compulsory for a year or two if need be. Or a Gaelic 'history' class where pupils could learn the basic words that are common to both Scottish Gaelic and Ulster Gaelic and learn other principle causes for the language's decline *COUGH CATHOLIC CHURCH COUGH COUGH!!*

Arguably, that could keep the 'Ulster Scots' contingent happy too, adding a Scottish slant to daily education.

With regards to sports, well, there'll probably be loggerheads regarding Gaelic sports.
At first, maybe Rugby and Gaelic football could be the principle sports, over the years the Gaelic games might become more appealing to Protestants. This in turn could apply pressure on the GAA to alter it's 'uninviting' appearance.

Who knows....

This educational apartheid is expensive, unjustifiable and a cancer to Northern Ireland's communities.

The only people who gain from it are those who depend on divided communities i.e. the politicians in charge.