Getting mad about grammar schools

I lost my temper the other day. It’s something I used to do quite a bit when I was young but as  with many of my passions, it has dimmed with time. Mind you, once I’d cooled down I got angry all over again, this time with myself for having been annoyed. 

The source of my irritation was a man who - with some passion - corrected me for suggesting that secondary schools here are not as good as grammar schools. On mature reflection (as Brian Lenihan put it) I can see it was a crass and undiplomatic thing to say, given that my listener had taught for many years in a secondary school. What had catapulted me into making the statement was the question of whether, if you disapproved of the grammar school/secondary school divide, you should send your children to a secondary school. 

I know there are people who believe that it’s only in your actions you show your true beliefs. However, I’m not wholly convinced that, if you don’t believe in selection by academic ability, you should display these beliefs by sending your children to a secondary school. I quite appreciate the demands made on teachers in secondary schools - having taught in one and having visited over a thirty-year period both grammar and secondary school classrooms, there’s little question that for the most part, secondary classrooms make more demands on the teacher than grammar schools. So it would be possible to argue that secondary schools are in fact better than grammar schools, in that they work with children who have less appetite for the curriculum offered and often have little hesitation in telling the teacher as much. 

But if secondary schools are in fact better, how to explain the insistence by middle-class parents that grammar schools are kept in place and that selection by academic ability remains post 11+? The man who triggered my passing wrath explained it in terms of social status: parents didn’t want their children mixing with the riff-raff of secondary schools. I think he’s right in that and it is a factor sometimes overlooked. 

But there’s also the fact that young people tend to do what their friends do. And if they’re in classrooms where the assumption is that the pupils will secure good grades and proceed to university, those assumptions tend to be accepted and chances are the individual child will, to a greater or lesser extent, do likewise. There are children who’ll be more successful as the top stream in a secondary school rather than the bottom stream in a grammar school, but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule. By and large, a child in a grammar school is more likely to go on to third level education than one in a secondary school. 

So given that situation, I don’t blame any parent who wants to send their child to a grammar school, any more than I blame bankers or politicians for picking up fat salaries or pensions. The finger of accusation should be pointed at those who set up this unjust system and work to maintain it, rather than at those who try to navigate their way through the system that confronts them. 

There. Having got that off my chest I feel in less of a tearing-at-the-walls-with-my-nails mood already. 

Remembering 1916

I was down in Dublin over the Easter period and I happened to pass Hodges Figgis bookshop. The display window was filled with books of all sorts, many of them dealing with aspects of Easter 1916. My belief that the coming centenary will generate massive public interest is reinforced by a letter in today’s Irish Times by Tom Stokes, a grandson of John Stokes, who was part of the Boland Mills Garrison in 1916.  In the letter Stokes ticks off Alf MacLochlainn, the grand-nephew of Patrick Pearse, for lamenting the absence of commemorations of the Easter Rising. 

Stokes points out that he is the co-ordinator of the Citizens’ Campaign for Republic Day. They are hoping that on April 24, 2014, Republic Day will be celebrated in all 32 counties of Ireland building towards “a very significant and unique commemoration by citizens on Republic Day, 2016”.

I find that very cheering. Now that it’s safe to do so, many southern political parties will be trumpeting their republican credentials.  The south’s government in particular will be keen to take control of whatever commemorations are held.Stokes’s campaign seems to be non-party, which is a very good thing. The focus should be on the men and women who showed massive courage and dedication to the nation 100 years ago, not on political parties. I’m also cheered by Stokes speaking of all 32 counties. There are those who would like to glide past that aspect of the republic proclaimed on the steps of the GPO; they’d prefer to encourage people to think of real  Ireland existing south of the border only. If Stokes’s campaign achieved nothing else than to re-awaken a realisation in citizens south of the border that those of us living in this part of the island  - all of us living here, regardless of political views - are their fellow-countrymen, then his campaign will have been eminently worthwhile. 

Such a change, like a change almost 100 years ago, would be as miraculous as it is welcome.

Easter, 1916

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I have met them at close of day   

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey   

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head   

Or polite meaningless words,   

Or have lingered awhile and said   

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done   

Of a mocking tale or a gibe   

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,   

Being certain that they and I   

But lived where motley is worn:   

All changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

Longer sentences for killing a cop?

Conflicted - a great word, that. The Americans are powerful people for taking nouns and changing them into verbs, and ‘conflicted’ is a good example. It’s also the state I find myself in this morning as the sun shines in the window onto my desk and I listen to the buzz of a neighbour's tree being cut down.  

So what am I conflicted about? Well, Theresa May, actually. Or rather, the proposal Teresa has made that people found guilty of killing a police officer or a prison warden should be locked up for a very long time - longer than would be the case had they killed, say, someone out of work or the local rat-catcher. 

The reason I’m conflicted is that my initial reaction is to say ‘For once I agree with the Tories’.  All lives are precious, but policemen and women, as those authorised to uphold the law that protects us all, are of particular significance. To strike at them is to strike at us all. So although I can’t stick the May woman, I’d have to agree with her on this one.

That is, until I think for a minute. Might there be other groups which play a key role in our society? Take the killing of Pat Finucane.  One of the heinous qualities of that crime was that Finucane was a solicitor - a man whose work was to make sure that people got justice in our courts. His killing was brutal, and the fact that there was state collusion makes it even more vile; but the fact that he was a solicitor, part of the network which looks to protect us all, made him special. So maybe there’s a case for particularly long sentences for those who kill a lawyer?

And then there are judges. And journalists. And doctors. All key jobs, devoted to the welfare and protection of society and its members. Shouldn’t the killers of such people pay a particularly heavy price too?

In short,  you begin to see that an awful lot of jobs have a unique role to play. Their members are deserving of protection and their killers deserving of punishment.  But a heavier punishment than the killing of someone who has different work or no work at all? There are so many jobs which, it could be argued, are vital to a healthy society, the people holding them should be protected. Assuming, of course, that the judge, the policeman, the doctor, the journalist  is doing his/her job properly. 

See what I mean about being conflicted? Perhaps the best solution is for all human life, regardless of job or trade or profession or circumstances, to be regarded as sacred, and the killing of any man or woman deserving of equal punishment. 

Matt Baggott: getting it wrong and getting it right

I was in the East Belfast Skainos centre last week. It is an impressive building, modern and elegant in an area that otherwise shouts “Poverty!” at every turn. I wonder would the people of East Belfast think differently about our politics if all of the area had buildings of that quality.

Meanwhile the PSNI Chief Constable Matt Baggott seems to have the notion of poverty on his mind when he called for politicians to tackle endemic poverty and youth unemployment. He believes that loyalist and republican violence has its roots in economic and social neglect. He’s also warned of the dangers of violence coinciding with the G8 summit meeting in Fermanagh. 

As to the second point:  whenever the police predict an “upsurge in violence”, you can be pretty sure it won’t happen. Remember all those Christmas run-ups where the RUC warned us they had intelligence that said the IRA was planning a concentrated bombing campaign? Any paramilitary group with half a brain chooses its own time, not Baggott’s. 

But he’s onto something with the first point. Something that’s rarely been addressed over the past forty years is the fact that most of the conflict was fought by those living in deprived areas.When you live in a system that clearly doesn’t give a damn about you, you’re more likely to seek radical means of addressing the wrong. As G B Shaw said so long ago, if you want to turn a revolutionary into a law-abiding conservative, give him £50,000, 

Watch me now...

I don’t know if you caught Alex Kane’s tweet yesterday about the BBC’s Sunday Sequence: "Sunday Sequence is probably the most challenging, interesting, informative and rounded programme on Radio Ulster.”  To which Martin McGuinness within minutes had responded: “I propose an amendment to @AlexKane  tweet re Sunday Sequence,drop 'probably.'’

Both men are right, and not just because I was on the programme yesterday. The  presenter William Crawley is head and shoulders above other presenters on BBC Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster - maybe even in Ireland. He’s articulate, he’s fearless and he’s always courteous. Plus he possesses an intelligence that leaves his peers in the starting blocks. You don’t need to think long about some of the programmes  that Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster serves up daily to conclude that the vision of the management in Ormeau Avenue is seriously purblind. It’ll be too late to lament his value if Crawley one of these days jumps ship and goes to London, or better still Dublin. 

Anyway, enough of that. Yesterday’s Sunday Sequence  had a look at the proposed Shared Future being served up by Stormont.  The initiative has been greeted with exasperated sighs  from a number of directions  but frankly I’ve little patience with that response. With people who say “But there’s nothing new here - we proposed that way back whenever!”. Or with parties who gurn about not having been invited into the shaping of the policy. Yes, maybe they did and maybe they should have been, but are they more concerned with their own self-importance or with the initiative itself? So what if it should have been implemented years ago? The past can’t be changed so let’s focus on where we are now and what we can do. 

Personally I cannot see what’s not to like about 10,000 work placements for young people, 10 shared education campuses, 100 shared summer schools, 10 shared neighbourhood developments.   No, the flags issue, the parades issue, the dealing-with-the-past issue - none of these has been directly addressed yet. But what has been proposed tackles the same problem: we live in a society that’s divided by mental razor-wire and it’s time we produced the wire-cutters. 

I have just one suggestion for those engaged in this task: let our political leaders lead. It's a truth universally acknowledged that leaders are most effective when they model the behaviour they look to cultivate in their followers. So let’s have the Stormont MLAs and Executive dropping off their children at shared education campuses, let’s have our politicians organising and attending their own shared summer schools, let’s see them living in shared neighbourhoods. Because as things stand,  the example some of them are setting in Stormont encourages not the best in society but the worst. 

Check it out on TV. Watch any DUP politician, up to and including the First Minister, when s/he is on-screen with a Sinn Féin colleague. What does their body-language say, how often do they establish so much as eye-contact with their colleague? Rather what we get is “ I may be standing beside this person but I really really don’t like it and frankly I detest them.” 

OK, I’ll go out on a limb and say that most DUP politicans in Stormont act like this because they’re fearful of their electorate and play to the lowest common denominator: ‘There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader'. That’s the charitable explanation. The less charitable is that they really do detest their partners in the Executive. In either case it's a bit daft to urge your constituents to work towards more civilized cross-community relations and even friendship when every time you appear on TV, you send exactly the opposite message. 

Death of a priest

John McCullagh died a couple of days ago. He was a Catholic priest - or as the Belfast Telegraph  describes him, a "pervert priest" who "took his secrets to the grave, never having faced justice". The report goes on to talk about how McCullagh "fled" to a Maghera nursing home when it was revealed that he had sexually abused an eight-year-old girl over a seven-year period. "Other victims did come forward in the wake of the Belfast Telegraph expose, but McCullagh never faced justice in court", The paper then goes on to talk  about "his vile actions".

I haven't followed the case of Fr McCullagh so I don't know any more than the Telegraph  tells me. However, I did know John McCullagh when he was a young man in the town from which we both came - Omagh. He was older than me and I remember him on occasion playing football with my brothers.  Since his death I've talked to a number of people who knew him, as a priest in Derry City and elsewhere, and they've been emphatic if not loud in his praise (it doesn't do to be too loud when saying positive things about "pervert priests"), speaking of the amount of good work he did  over the years. The Telegraph doesn't talk about this part of his life - in fact it seems resentful that McCullagh will be buried "with full religious honours".

My guess is that McCullagh was like the rest of us - a mixture of good and bad. In the old days, the Catholic Church was rightly criticised for being obsessed with sexual sin, before which all other sins shrank into nothing. These days, the same people who would have been emphatic in their criticism of the Church for this are themselves most vocal in elevating sexual abuse to the exclusion of all other sins, in this case to the point where they are unhappy about how McCullagh's body is lowered into the grave.

When we measure the worth of a life,  logic and justice demand that we assess all of it, not just the parts or actions  we select from it.  We know that John McCullagh had dark areas as well as clear areas in his life - as do we all.  Maybe we should leave the stone-throwing to those among us who are without sin. Like the Belfast Telegraph. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.

Two tales of two novelists

It’s funny  (that’s funny-peculiar, not funny-ha-ha) the way things conjoin sometimes. Over the last few days I’ve been thinking about two books by writers that I know personally and whose work I find interesting.

On Thursday, Danny Morrison did a reading of his most recent book Rudi: In the Shadow of Knulp.  It’s a novel that draws its inspiration from an earlier novel by the German writer Herman Hesse. But Morrison’s book is set in Ireland and follows the central character through the post-war period and then the 1960s and 1970s. After the reading I asked the author how was it that, as a committed republican, he had made the Troubles a sketchy background and the central character Rudi an apolitical being. The answer I got was that there is a great deal more in life than politics or even political conflict, and besides as a writer he Morrison had learnt that when you write from a political perspective, you risk producing something closer to propaganda. 

The second writer is David Park.  A friend  today emailed me an interview with the author in the Guardian  newspaper. In it Park talks about his latest book, The Light of Amsterdam, and how although his eighth novel, it was his first truly post-Troubles work. In other words in this novel, like Morrison, Park doesn’t allow politics a centre-stage place.  I’ve read earlier works by both authors and I think these their most recent -  Rudi  and The Light of Amsterdam - are emphatically their best. 

So is that what makes them good and is Danny Morrison right - to give politics or political struggle the foreground  is to risk damage to the quality of the work? His book and Park’s most recent would suggest that that is the case. I’m not so sure. While it may be harder to successfully  include politics or political struggle in a novel, it can and has been done. For example, an early work by another Belfast writer, Ronan Bennett, Overthrown by Strangers,  gives centre stage to political violence. So too does his award-winning novel The Catastrophist.  Jonathan Coe’s What a Carve-up  is another case in point, and of course George Orwell’s Animal Farm  and 1984  are classic examples of the same thing.

It’s a fascinating issue. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that most people largely ignore politics, except as a kind of beauty contest: which candidate looks best, which would you like to have a beer with, which caters to your prejudices. And maybe that’s why most novels by-pass politics. Perhaps if we taught our young people that politics is something which everyone has an obligation to be interested in, even to be involved in, there’d be less room in politics for  phony smiles, back-stabbing and failure to deliver on promises. And more room in fiction for politics.