Challenge to the separate schools system

Lots of facts about religion haven't seeped into the general consciousness yet - for example, the extinction of the Catholic faith in Scotland. Therefore, as the EIS prepares to mount a challenge to the lawfulness of the 1918 Education Act which enshrines the right of Catholic schools to appoint teachers according to religious belief and character, it is perhaps timeous to embark on some consciousness-raising.

The 1918 Education Act enshrined the right of denominational schools to make teaching appointments according to religious belief and character. As Scotland's largest teaching union prepares to challenge the lawfulness of this legislation, I doubt if the EIS really understands its true significance. Predictably, members will trot out the same old tired, indeed, untenable arguments, such as the charges that Catholic schools indoctrinate pupils and cause bigotry.

No need. These charges are easy to disprove because indoctrination is what all education is about - it simply means ''teaching in''. Teachers have always indoctrinated, eg English grammar and important dates in history. The fact is, however, that Catholic schools today do not indoctrinate Catholic beliefs and that (ironically) should be the case put forward by the EIS to challenge the continued lawfulness of the 1918 Act.

Far from causing bigotry, Catholic schools positively encourage apathy and indifferentism, as evidenced by the 90% lapsation rate of young Catholics while still attending school. As a former head of RE in three Catholic schools, I can vouch for the fact that there is no genuinely Catholic religious education in contemporary Catholic schools.

So, while fully committed to the principle of Catholic education (it is entirely justifiable on educational and democratic grounds), I would offer some words of advice to those, like the EIS, who wish to challenge the separate school system. Stick to challenging, not the letter of the law, but its spirit.

So, while fully committed to the principle of Catholic education (it is entirely justifiable on educational and democratic grounds) I would offer some words of advice to those, like the EIS, who wish to challenge the separate school system. Stick to challenging, not the letter of the law, but its spirit.

Remember, the 1918 Act enshrined the right of denominational schools to make appointments according to religious belief and character because Catholic schools were built to pass on the Catholic faith. As well as taking for granted that Catholic belief and values would permeate the entire curriculum to ensure that pupils were able to examine the world and issues from an informed Catholic perspective, parents could be sure that their children would receive a systematic programme of instruction on Catholic teaching. The truly Catholic mind understands that not one single Catholic belief can be discarded without affecting all the rest.

Sound ''faith teaching'', therefore, is essential - that means believing teachers passing on, with conviction, their doctrinal knowledge to pupils. This is why certain subjects - like RE and biology (where Catholic sexual morality could be clearly expounded) - have always been reserved for Catholic teachers. Nowadays, however, Catholic religious education does not fit the traditional description. To remind so-called ''Catholic educationists'' that the raison d'etre of Catholic schools is to teach the Catholic faith is to raise a smile if not to have them rolling in the aisles.

Openly, members of Catholic school boards have boasted that Catholic schools today take the same ''neutral'' approach to religious belief and practice as non-denominational schools and religiously indifferent parents fighting Catholic school closures declare that they do so,

not on religious grounds, but

either because the school has a

good academic record or on

grounds of proximity.

Proof that the constant references to the ''distinctive Catholic ethos'' in defence of the separate school system has become a meaningless soundbite comes from a Catholic teacher recently quoted in the Scottish press as saying that ''Catholic schools have the same education aims in RE as do the non-denominational schools''.

The EIS argument that Catholic teachers have an unfair advantage in the job market, is, then, entirely valid. It is also unfair to con parents and pupils into thinking that they are enjoying a Catholic education when all they are really getting is humanism with hymns.

Cardinal Winning is president of the Catholic Education Commission in Scotland. Quoted in an interview on unity in the Church of Scotland magazine Life and Work, he uses ecumenical double-speak to blur the significance of what he is actually saying: ''We won't arrive at unity in my lifetime but . . . there will be gradual convergence until there is practically no difference. We'll be accepting things from other Churches and dropping off things that were once part of our baggage without missing them.''

Well, Catholic schools have certainly ''dropped off things'' to the extent that more than 90% of Catholic pupils lapse from the practice of the woolly pseudo-Catholicism fed to them by unconvinced, even openly rebellious, teachers.

It is surely time to raise the general consciousness of those Catholic parents who are confused about the failure of Catholic schools to teach the faith. They need to know that Catholic educationists - from the Cardinal down - now prefer convergence to conviction: false ecumenism, if you'll excuse the pun, is winning.

The EIS must highlight this loss of Catholic faith and insist that the 1918 Act does not apply to the newchurch schools. Cardinal Winning has intimated that the acid test of Catholic life is no longer attendance at Sunday Mass; clearly, Catholic schools have become places to indoctrinate, not about Catholicism, but about basic humanism and the leftish politics of which liberation theologians are so fond. The protection afforded by the 1918 (designed to ensure correct doctrinal teaching) is, therefore, no longer necessary.