Jennifer Horgan: We ignore ‘small things’ causing psychological harm in schools
Lead, Local Staff Children Were 2024, Sit From Human International Formation Catholic Bodies, Forced Or Irish To Parents In Indeed And Did Schools Rights Through, Despite Non Criticism While Faith Their In Nothing
“A tragic story. God, it was a very tragic story,” I heard one woman say, as we filed out of the cinema.
Setting a distance between then and now, having watched , felt about right. The film depicts a world as bleak as the grey November sky that awaited us all outside.
Only, strangely (ever the contrarian) I felt the opposite.
As I left, nodding respectfully at the elderly couple still reading the last of the credits, my heart tugged back towards the 1980s world of rotary dial telephones and brown corduroy couches. Not to reclaim all of it. Not the oppression of the Church, the small-mindedness, the judgement. I wanted only one element. I wanted Billy Furlong, the film’s protagonist, played by Cork’s own and glorious Cillian Murphy.
For anyone who hasn’t read Claire Keegan’s book of the same name, or hasn’t been to see the film (the screenplay written by Enda Walsh), it’s a story of a man who is compelled to act when confronted with wrongdoing.
Furlong is unwilling to ignore the ‘small things’. When he spots a boy out collecting sticks in bad weather, his father an alcoholic, he stops the car, gets out, and gives him a handful of coins.
When he sees another young neighbour scavenging milk from a cat’s bowl, he stops, looks straight at him, never flinching. He is a thoroughly masculine man, a crying, hugging, coal-lugging, toast-warming man; he does what is right, regardless of the consequences to himself or his young family.
He doesn’t hear; he listens. When the Mother Superior manipulates a poor child who has been locked in a coal shed to cover up what has happened, he recognises she’s a bully.
His wife, played by the wonderful Eileen Walsh, tells him to ignore what’s going on in the Good Shepherd convent. He’s too ‘soft-hearted’ she says, but throughout the film we come to understand, as he struggles to breathe, that he has no choice: only action will relieve him of his despair.
Do you know a Billy Furlong in 2024? I do. I have met quite a few, interviewing people around Cork and beyond. Every time I wish I could be more like them.
Indeed, there are so many ‘small things’ we might notice in our small communities, ‘small things’ signifying oppression.
Picture the scene for me please: on a tree-lined road in Cork, a woman is walking her dog. It is a clear-skied Monday morning. Up ahead of her, walks a well-dressed man and his young daughter.
The two of them are chatting away, and just at the corner before their small Catholic primary school, he bends down to give his daughter a hug. She’s young enough to allow it, maybe eight. He passes the woman, observing, as he walks away, his face glowing.
The woman knows he will give no thought to the injustices soon to be carried out in that small school — on the children and teachers in there, who continue to have their basic rights ignored. The woman removed her own child from the school. Few noticed.
Who are they, these people being oppressed? Well, that will depend on the school, but we can imagine: the gay teacher, afraid of coming out to his colleagues; the atheist teacher, disrespected in her workplace; the child left colouring down the back of the classroom, while the others recite their prayers, answer questions asked by a visiting priest, plan their outfits, the big day out.
“What is heaven?” a Buddhist child might ask some evening, coming home, having listened from the back of the room. Quickly followed by: “Why am I so different?” On this topic, on this emotional, psychological, spiritual, and moral wrongdoing, there will be plenty of evidence in print for the next generation to come, and they will judge our choice to ignore it.
In September, we were told that parents would ‘shortly’ be invited to complete a national survey on their preferred ethos of school, as part of government efforts to change more Catholic schools to multi-denominational patronage.
The survey never came. We didn’t notice. Just as we didn’t notice that the Citizens’ Assembly on education never came. So far, few political parties even mention divestment in their manifestos for the upcoming election.
A spokesperson for the Department of Education confirmed last month: “The Minister has set out that she intends that the survey of primary school communities will be launched before the end of the year.”
Intends. End of the year. It’s hardly charged with urgency. Now that the government has been dissolved, so too the promises.
What most people don’t realise (how could they?) is that the state model of education is multi-denominational and co-educational. From a rights perspective, the state can’t stand by anything else. Yet the model is rarely promoted.
At primary, the Community National School is multi-denominational and co-educational. It is the state’s own model, run by Education Training Boards. But rather than promote it, the state leaves it up to the parents to decide. Except that can’t be, can it? It can’t be ‘up’ to all parents. You can’t have parent choice for everyone. I doubt there is any school community where every parent feels their choices are being heard. We won’t know, until this elusive survey appears, but it won’t appear if parents aren’t interested enough to ask for it.
And is a survey even appropriate if fundamental rights are at stake? Perhaps not.
Future Irish readers — hear this. In 2024, despite criticism from international human rights bodies, Irish parents did nothing while non-Catholic children and staff were forced to sit through, or indeed lead, faith formation in their local schools
They failed to recognise it as abuse. Was the abuse as severe as what happened to women and children the century before? No. But by 2024 we knew the impact of emotional harm. We knew the difference between right and wrong.
I’m exaggerating? Go online, buy and read David Graham’s wonderful new book, , on the topic. It describes how it feels to be a non-Catholic child in a Catholic classroom. Fintan O’Toole rightly describes the book as “tender, engaging, and insightful”. It is all of those things, and it highlights the ongoing psychological and emotional harm happening in primary schools today.
The reconfiguration of schools (changing from Catholic patronage) is moving at a snail’s pace — being generous. What we must focus on today is the removal of faith formation from school hours. Remove that, and schools come a lot closer to being egalitarian.
Children in multi-denominational settings still learn about all religions and none. This is not about religion; it’s about rights. I will trawl through every party manifesto to see who is willing to face this basic fact.
The man walking his little girl to school, on a tree-lined road in Cork in 2024, is a very different man to the soft-hearted Billy Furlong. Times are harder in Billy’s world, no question. But he noticed the ‘small things’ and took action. I hope we open our eyes now, to the ‘small things’ hurting children. They might not be our children but they are children nonetheless. I hope, like Billy Furlong, we come to acknowledge that they are not ‘small things’ at all, and find the courage to act, not only to protect our own, but because we feel compelled to do what is right.