Last week was a week of celebration for the Integrated School Movement in Northern Ireland. It came of age technically I suppose in 1999 when Lagan College had its 18th birthday but, aware that the concept requires constant promoting, all opportunities to attract media interest and hence raise consciousness are welcomed by those dedicated to financing development.
My own children didn't attend integrated schools, although with parents from two different religions and cultures they were ideal candidates. At the time the eldest was starting school just about the time of the establishment of the first integrated primary and as she and her brothers attended, and were happy at, an excellent school 200 yards from our front door, it didn't made sense to move them.
It is hard enough to establish and maintain one challenging vision. In fact those devoted to integrated education not only set out to bring children of all traditions to be educated together, but they combined this challenging objective with another and equally contentious vision of comprehensive education within integration.
I suppose if you set out to achieve the impossible you first make sure that your principles and values stand up to sustained hostile attack. Thus, if the central plank of your argument is that children of all traditions have the right to be educated together, it is hard not to
justify the fact that children of different abilities have that same right.
Last week I was intrigued to learn, that the original intention in the integrated movement was not to set up a competing school system to the controlled and maintained schools but to use its influence to transform existing schools so that they became properly integrated. Presumably then it was lack of success in effecting change in the practices of the traditional schools that forced integrated campaigners to start a competing integrated school system. With hindsight this approach was inevitable.
It is infinitely easier to start a new organisation, which can from the beginning establish its own culture.
Those who study and are expert in change in organisations will confirm that it is virtually impossible to bring about wholesale change in the culture, values outlook, inlook and practices of any organisation. The one exception is when an organisation is fighting to maintain its very existence and has no choice but to change or become extinct.
So it has been in the educational field here. The 'transforming schools' for the most part have found themselves with falling rolls and have to either attract from the other community or close.
This kind of forced change, while it might work if the leadership is strong and visionary, is high risk.
While academic qualifications are highly prized there is also an emphasis on the breadth of educational achievements and the importance of each child being encouraged to achieve to the best of his/her abilities. Latterly also, the integrated movement has realised that it is not enough to bring people from diverse and hostile backgrounds together. Work must go on all the time with both teachers and pupils to ensure that conflict and its nature is understood and that all traditions and religions, irrespective of numerical power are equally respected.
This approach is a long way away from the schools which accept minorities into an unchanged dominant culture and claim success on the basis of increased numbers from that minority. This is assimilation not integration.
I am not going to enter into the merits or otherwise of the rights of schools to maintain exclusivity in terms of religion or indeed academic ability. However, I do feel that schools funded by the state purse have an obligation to educate children to understand, accept and see diversity and difference as strength not a weakness.
The integrated movement has now shown that this can be done. I suspect they are not asked too often to teach their blueprint. In fact my hunch is that some of our best schools in the maintained sector think they teach tolerance and respect already. However with single identity schools this can, by definition, be only theoretical and superficial.
The time has come for more radical and urgent change. The integrated sector is ready. Is the rest of education prepared to admit it has a lot to learn?
