Religion, education and religious education in Irish schools

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Date
2016-07-17
Authors
Hyland, Áine
Bocking, Brian
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Springer Nature
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Abstract
The character of religious education (RE) in Ireland is intimately linked to the religious patronage (ownership) of most publicly funded schools by religious institutions. Approximately 90 % of schools are run by the Catholic Church. This tradition of religious patronage is increasingly at odds with Ireland’s contemporary multicultural and multireligious society and raises pan-European questions of human rights, especially children’s rights, in the sphere of taxpayer-funded education. The chapter outlines the education system in Ireland (little known outside the republic) and discusses primary and secondary RE as well as current RE teacher education programmes including the innovative “Religions and Global Diversity” undergraduate programme at University College Cork. Progress towards the kind of multireligious RE recommended by the European Council of Ministers has recently slowed. The Irish Government exercises only limited control over what is taught in schools’ RE, and there are still very few teachers properly qualified to deliver education about religions (plural).
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Keywords
Catholic Church , Religious education (RE) , Ireland , Religious patronage , Publicly funded schools
Citation
Hyland, Á and Bocking, B. (2016) 'Religion, education and religious education in Irish schools', in Berglund, J., Shanneik, Y. and Bocking, B (eds.) Religious Education in a Global-Local World. Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies, vol 4, pp. 123–133. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32289-6_8
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© 2016, Springer International Publishing Switzerland. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of a chapter published as: Hyland, Á and Bocking, B. (2016) 'Religion, education and religious education in Irish schools', in Berglund, J., Shanneik, Y. and Bocking, B (eds.) Religious Education in a Global-Local World. Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies, vol 4, pp. 123–133. Springer, Cham. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32289-6_8