Curriculum Change and Social Inclusion - International Bureau of ...

The challenges of social inclusion
in Northen Ireland:
citizenship and life skills
Michael Arlow
INTRODUCTION
The people of Northern Ireland have been directly involved
in communal conflict since 1968 when the violence of the
current phase of ‘the Troubles’ erupted onto our streets.
Much violence, hope and despair and many political
initiatives followed.
On 31 August 1994 the Irish Republican Army (IRA
or nationalist movement) declared a ‘complete cessation
of military operations’. The Combined Loyalist Military
Command (unionist movement) followed suit on 13
October of the same year. The IRA cessation broke down
at 7:01pm on 9 February 1996 when a massive car bomb
exploded near Canary Wharf, London, killing two, injuring
100 and causing £85 million worth of damage. The
cessation was reinstated on 20 July 1997 and is still in
operation.
The ‘Good Friday’ or ‘Belfast’Agreement (generally,
nationalists prefer ‘Good Friday’, unionists prefer
‘Belfast’) was signed on 10 April 1998. As Mo
Mowlam’s biographer Julia Langdon (2000) has
commented: ‘it may not have been perfect in anyone’s
book, but that was partly the point: everyone was a little
dissatisfied’. Nevertheless, in the referendum that
followed on 22 May 1998 simultaneously in Northern
Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, 71.2% of people in
Northern Ireland and 94.39% in the Republic voted in
favour of the agreement. Since then, the Northern Ireland
Executive, set up under the agreement, has had a
precarious existence.
To live in Northern Ireland today is to feel that we
are emerging from a conflict that has left more than 3,000
dead and many thousands injured, that we stand on the
brink of a new, peaceful and democratic, and potentially
prosperous future. At the same time there is a sure and
certain knowledge that there is also an almost equal
chance of a catastrophic slide back into violence and
chaos.
Murray Print (1999) quotes John F. Kennedy, himself
quoting H.G. Wells: ‘There is an old saying that the course
of civilization is a race between catastrophe and education.
In a democracy such as ours, we must make sure that
education wins’. At times it has felt as if we are engaged
in precisely that race. This paper seeks to tell the story of
a small part of that experience.
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II. EDUCATION AND THE CONFLICT
For much of the early part of the ‘Troubles’, schools were
seen as safe havens, a protected environment where the
violence and communal conflict were excluded. Teachers
often saw their role as one of limiting discussion of
controversial issues and preventing the outbreak of
dissension in their oasis of peace. For many young people,
this provided the only stability in an otherwise turbulent
landscape.
Within the education system an appreciation grew of
the responsibility to face the challenges presented by the
conflict in a more proactive way. The Department of
Education (DENI) was made responsible for community
relations in 1975 and it supported a wide range of
initiatives. By the late 1980s the government adopted a
more explicit community relations policy. Various
initiatives, drawn together under the name Education for
Mutual Understanding (EMU), were made compulsory as
a cross-curricular theme in 1992. On the broader curriculum
front, a common history curriculum was introduced in
1990 and a common religious education curriculum in
1993.
Initially, EMU did not enjoy universal support and there
were those, on both sides of the divide, who saw it as social
engineering driven by a desire to dilute cultural identity.
EMU was in many ways a bold initiative that helped to
change the nature of discourse in Northern Ireland by
introducing a language that ‘allows people to express their
support for cultural pluralism and political dialogue rather
than sectarianism and political violence’ (Smith &
Robinson, 1996). The recent report entitled Towards a
culture of tolerance: education for diversity (DENI, 1999)
recognized that EMU and other initiatives:
have had considerable success in breaking down barriers, opening
people’s minds and establishing new networks of contacts.
However, it is not surprising that, in the face of centuries-long
social divisions, they must be seen as merely the beginning of
social transformation.
An evaluation of EMU carried out by the University of
Ulster (UU) identified strengths but also some weaknesses.
There was an insufficient focus on human rights and
political education. Teachers found EMU to be elusive and