An Attack on Our Children

by Margaret McKearney

Article 42:3 of Bunreacht na hÉireann (constitution of the 26-County Republic of Ireland) specifies that ‘The State shall provide for free primary education and shall endeavour to supplement and give reasonable aid to private and corporate educational initiative, and when the public good requires it provide other educational facilities or institutions’. Whilst this stipulation will fail to warm the hearts of families like the Synotts  it does flag a basic level of state responsibility to uphold standards of national literacy as a constitutional right for every citizen.  

How then does Minister Dempsey square this against the Department's decision to reduce the level of remedial assistance to children of school going age?  Using the pretext that 12 per cent of Irish children are in receipt of special help as compared to an EU norm of just 3 per cent.  They say they are tightening up as the may have been overly generous.  Somehow this self depreciating comment fails to convince.

The problem is not that Santa Claus controls the education budget or  that Irish children are less academically inclined than their EU peers but rather that the educational system of this state is 'loaded'  to maintain social order and privilege.  State run schools throughout the country are grossly under funded, with dedicated professionals battling against the odds and all too often dependant on the largess of their local community to supply teaching aids, their success all too often reflecting the socio-economic status of the area.  While the government condones and aids a parallel private system which in turn nurtures and regurgitates the existing elite that has proven so malign and corrupt.

Take the above in conjunction with the intention to close Shanganagh Castle, the only open detention centre for young offenders in the state.  This centre has provided rehabilitative and educational opportunities for convicted 16-21 year olds.  Each year over 1000 children drop out of full time education for a variety of factors.  Very often these are the very children that avail of remedial or special assistance tutorage.  Furthermore a disproportionate number of these drop outs end up the on the wrong side of the law.  These children therefore are being failed in multiplicity by the government.  

The Government fails them in the nursery; they fail them in the schoolrooms. It then attempts to resolve the results by building more and more secure prisons and once there it leaves the inmates to succumb to drugs and despair.  Many of these children, due to  lack of opportunity may not even know how to read the constitution never mind demand their rights. 

 Maybe that’s what Messrs Dempsey and McDowell have in mind.

Margaret McKearney...29 December 2002