Examination of Witnesses (Questions 440
- 459)
TUESDAY 14 SEPTEMBER 2004
DR PAUL
CONNOLLY, MS
CLARE WHITE,
MR HUGH
DOYLE AND
MR BARNEY
MCNEANEY
Q440 Chairman: In your submission
to us you say that you want to see the PSNI keep data. I understand
from your answer that they are.
Mr McNeaney: That is correct.
We would be very keen to ensure that all of the information is
being provided directly to the PSNI and I suspect that there is
quite a significant issue of under-reporting. I think there would
be an issue in terms of young people speaking to their parents
about the difficulties that they face and then concerns that the
parents may have about reporting the issue to the PSNI. That is
linked to a larger issue which we need to face in terms of general
reporting of crime in this area.
Q441 Chairman: So the PSNI are doing
what you would wish them to be doing. It is reporting in to them
which is the problem, is it?
Mr McNeaney: Yes.
Q442 Mr McGrady: Dr Connolly, would
I be right in assuming that the political and the cultural attitudes
of these young children are taken primarily from their parents'
attitudes, and there are additional influences being brought to
bear at that age? Secondly, you suggest the development of a curriculum
which encourages the pre-schools and primary schools to explore
the different cultural aspects. Would that really address this
problem that you have highlighted?
Dr Connolly: I was listening to
the session before this one and it seems there is a blame culture
often as to whether it is parents or schools that are to blame.
Q443 Chairman: We are talking about
three to six years olds. It has to be the parents. You cannot
blame the schools because they are not at school.
Dr Connolly: The problem with
that is you are ignoring what is outside the front door. Once
you walk outside the front door, if you are being walked to the
shops, you are seeing red, white and blue kerbstones or tricolours
hanging from lampposts, you are seeing racist graffiti, paramilitary
graffiti. Let us not just start blaming individual parents when
it is a society problem. It comes back to all of the issues that
were raised in the first session about segregation, about the
vacuum in terms of politics here. All of these things have an
effect upon young people. Clearly parents have a role to play.
But are we to blame parents? Should we blame them if they are
living in a situation where they feel under threat and when they
live in a society which is divided in different ways? Some of
the transmission of ideas and values at a very early age does
come from parents, there is no doubt about that, but let us not
blame it on the irrational attitudes of parents. The children
are picking it up and they are choosing to behave in a certain
way. There is a much more fundamental problem than that and that
really leads on to the second part of the question about what
can be done. The picture which is obvious and is coming through
from this is that it is a multi-level problem and it requires
a multi-level solution. We need a political solution, we need
a solution in terms of segregation and all the rest of it and
just one aspect of that must be to work with children as well.
My view is that we certainly should be working with young children.
There are things that can be done and there are positive effects
which can be made and we have demonstrated that recently in Northern
Ireland. That is one piece of the jigsaw. It would be naive to
think that we could solve the problems simply by changing children's
attitudes, but obviously that is one part of that process.
Q444 Mr McGrady: How do parents and
communities in a highly polarized society like Northern Ireland
actually ensure that these young people subsequently progress
with that experience through your centres?
Mr Doyle: In terms of Glencree,
we provide very positive experiences in all of our programmes.
It is in a very isolated location on the side of the Wicklow mountains
overlooking Dublin. That can be beneficial in a sense for an initial
engagement with people who may never have met before, but for
our work to be sustained we need to look at communities as well
and look at resources, how we can support communities who are
looking at cross-community efforts within their own community.
In a way the cross-community work is not a cure for all ills but
it is a definite part of the solution, in a way it is an opening
up. In terms of the Glencree education programme, we have just
received some new funding from the International Fund for Ireland
to develop our existing programme and to develop a new qualitative
programme in terms of linking schools north and south. We are
approaching three schools north and three schools south to link
up with each other and to provide support for the teachers and
students to maintain that link.
Q445 Chairman: Are these Roman Catholic
schools in the north?
Mr Doyle: They would be a range
of schools. We are hoping to have one integrated school, one Protestant
school and one Catholic school. The aim is to adopt a whole school
approach where teachers of social and political education, religious
education or transition year and throughout the rest of the school
would be involved in promoting the values of peace education in
terms of respect for adversity. We are also looking to work with
the whole staff of the school and eventually the parents as well
so that the parents within each of these schools will perhaps,
if given the choice, choose the school in terms of the ethos that
it promotes, a respect for diversity, and that there would be
something encapsulated in the prospectus of the school.
Q446 Mr McGrady: Obviously there
is great value in what you do and great credit to you for doing
it. Is there any way of assessing the continuum of that experience
with young people and their parents and the community? Does that
develop of its own accord or do you have to keep feeding it and
funding it?
Mr Doyle: Glencree does not have
any statistical information to give. We have lots of young people
who come to our programmes for a short time, maybe for the day,
we have some who stay overnight or for a longer period and there
are those who come back regularly to programmes. It is from those
young people who come back that we can see a definite change.
We had one guy who came up with his school about six years ago,
he has been in contact for about six years and he has just finished
an internship in Glencree. In many ways his whole perspective
on life has been changed because of the influence of the people
that he has met and the experiences that he has had through the
work of Glencree. Before he was very sports orientated but now
he is looking at working as a peace activist himself. There are
numerous stories that I can cite like that.
Ms White: We are a relatively
young organisation. We have only been in the building four years.
The work we do is just a very small part of the overall scheme
of work that is being done by local organisations. We work with
Glencree and with Dr Connolly. What we aim to do is to pick individuals
who have potential in the future for being either business leaders
or community leaders and working with them on our programme so
that we can change their views and help them be more open-minded
and less prejudiced and then take that view forward. In one of
our programmes we target individuals who could be drawn into more
dubious activities and target them and help to try and change
their views. We only employ nine staff. We do not have the resources
at the moment to do a large piece of evaluation or to track individuals
to the extent that we would like and it is an area of work that
we are looking to expand upon and gain funding for. We track individuals
as far as we can through e-mail, and we have had a number of them
who have gone on to do further study or who have gone to university
to study peace studies. We also had one particular individual
who came on one of our exchange programmes and his parents did
not want him to come on the next round because they knew that
he would be exposed to people of differing views from himself.
He went against his parents' views and attended and he is now
working in an integrated community centre. So we know it does
work.
Q447 Chairman: How old was he?
Ms White: Sixteen. It is a very
small part that we play but obviously it does have an impact.
If you look at the feedback and the quotes that we provided in
our written evidence, the experience of being with other people
and the experience of living with, socialising and working with
them over that period of time does have an impact on those individuals.
We need to do a bit more work on assessing the long-term impact.
Q448 Mr Beggs: Your submissions set
out examples of educational peace programmes and youth exchanges
which challenge perceptions and prejudices. How do you think these
differ from work done in Northern Ireland through cross-community
contact schemes in schools, youth, community and sports groups;
and education for mutual understanding and cultural heritage programmes
in schools?
Ms White: The programmes that
we run at the Peace Centre take individuals out of their environment
and place them alongside individuals of directly opposing views
for a period of time, usually it is over an extended weekend.
They are challenged very strongly on their views. It is informal
education. There is role play, people write poems, they tell stories
and they tell histories. We play a number of games which are meant
to expose generic prejudice and the dangers of being prejudiced
and how you can make decisions incorrectly based on false information
about individuals. So it is a very informal structure. They live
and socialise and work together for those four days. It is a very
intensive course. At the beginning of the course we find individuals
tend to stay in their own groups and they do not tend to speak
to each other too much, but by the end of the programme these
young people have made lifelong friends and they are texting each
other as they are leaving in the minibus for the airport. It is
a different environment from the one in which they are brought
up. They stay at the Peace Centre, they stay at Glencree and they
also stay in a hotel up here in Belfast. It is a totally different
experience from anything formal education could provide.
Mr Doyle: A lot of our programmes
are single identity, but broadening the whole experience to engage
in a cross-community, cross-border, British-Irish exchange makes
it more realistic for the young people involved. The work that
we do with Warrington is really vital to our programmes. In terms
of how our programmes may be unique, we are one of the few reconciliation
centres in the Republic of Ireland. In terms of working with young
people in the Republic of Ireland, once you start talking about
Northern Ireland it can be quite difficult to get them engaged.
We do not begin by going in heavy on the Northern Ireland conflict.
We look at issues of conflict within their own lives, which may
be bullying, issues of social class and refugees and the issue
of Irish travellers. Huge issues of prejudice exist around these
issues. We begin by looking at these issues and how each and every
one of us has various prejudices and stereotypes and looking at
where these stereotypes and prejudices have come from in terms
of their own lives and their own history. Eventually we move on
to look at conflict in these islands and I emphasise "these
islands" because it is not just about the two sides in Northern
Ireland knocking it out between them, it is about everybody on
these two islands that this conflict is about. So we look at the
part that young people in the Republic have to play in the conflict
and what part they can play in the peace as well. In terms of
looking at the part the young people from the Republic have to
play. There is huge racism or sectarianism towards the whole idea
of `Britishness' within the Republic of Ireland and we look at
that issue. It can be clearly seen on the terraces in Lansdowne
Road, for example, and we use issues of sport and we discuss why
there are so many prejudices among young people in that way. We
do an exercise called "Not Me" which looks at initial
impressions of `Irishness' and `Britishness'. When the list for
`Britishness' comes up it is often filled with a tirade of very
unmentionable words in this setting. The whole idea about the
programme at Glencree is to look at where this prejudice comes
from, why we have these stereotypes. The whole idea is to be aware
of them and to engage with young people from the other side.
Q449 Mr Beggs: How many young people
participate in the programmes each year and how are they selected
for the courses each of you run?
Ms White: At the Peace Centre
at the moment we have about 50 young people who participate. In
Warrington we select, Glencree select and our partner organisation
in Belfast (which is not a fixed partner at the moment) select.
They are put forward by the community organisations or the schools
that we are dealing with and they are interviewed. The reason
for the interview really is to establish that they are mature
enough to undergo the process, because quite a lot of the time
the process can be quite challenging intellectually. We need to
make sure they find it a positive experience to come on the programme.
It is done in order to check that they are capable of doing that
and to ensure that they have a basic understanding, a basic empathy
and that they are willing to sit down and listen to somebody else's
point of view and take on board that there is another view, because
that is the basic principle of the work that we are doing.
Mr Doyle: We have about 1,600
students who come through the Peace education programme each year
and then about another 400 in terms of the various follow-up exchanges
that we run. Our programmes are open to all schools throughout
Ireland. Generally speaking, the young people who participate
in the follow-up exchanges initially come through our schools'
programme.
Q450 Mr Beggs: Dr Connolly, how effective,
in your view, has education for mutual understanding been in promoting
better community relations among young people?
Dr Connolly: That is not one of
my areas of research. I can talk very generally. We know from
the research that it has been effective in places. The support
has not been there in terms of very clear guidance and resources
and so forth to schools. It has often been left to particular
schools and the individuals involved to take the initiative forward.
Where people are committed, where they have the time and the energy,
the enthusiasm, there has been some very good work. In other areas
where there are the general pressures on examination performance
and on standards then often these issues get marginalised.
Q451 Mr Beggs: Hugh, you mention
in your submission that it is your intention to see peace education
introduced to the mainstream school curriculum. What value do
you think this will have and is it your intention to lobby for
this to be introduced in Northern Ireland as well as in the Republic?
Mr Doyle: The majority of the
schools that we work with at the moment are certainly schools
from the Republic but we hope to expand into Northern Ireland
as well. We are very much aware that the existing curriculum is
very much overloaded and teachers are under many pressures already.
The approach that we are taking is to make it as easy as possible
for the teachers involved to integrate peace education within
the existing curriculum. We are not hoping to create a new subject
of peace education, there are too many subjects already, but there
is definitely room for peace education to be incorporated into
existing subject areas. For example, in the Republic of Ireland
there is Civic, Social and Political Education, Transition Year,
Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate Applied Religious Education.
Those are four areas that we are targeting in a strategic way
in terms of our new peace education resource pack. In this new
resource pack there will be a number of lesson plans and ideas
for action projects. We are trying to lay it out on a plate for
the teachers and to make it as easy as possible for them to integrate
it within already existing subject areas, not to increase their
workload but in many ways to help them out in their workload.
The whole idea would be that within each of these subject areas
the teachers would be doing peace education but that it would
also be done in conjunction with a programme at Glencree. Yesterday
I was in a school in Dublin which is introducing an eight week
peace education programme within their transition year course
and part of that was an introductory class from us in Glencree.
The teachers have been working away with various lesson plans
themselves. They will be coming up to Glencree and taking part
in a two day peace education programme. We will be going back
out to the school to look at follow-up ways to help support the
teachers and students to make it more concrete in terms of their
transition year programme.
Q452 Mr Beggs: Have you had any discussions
with the Department of Education as yet here in Northern Ireland?
Mr Doyle: They would be tentative.
We intend to increase our links with both departments north and
south. We have had links with the second level support services
in the Republic and second level support services, but we would
certainly be very keen to increase our contact and our links with
both departments.
Q453 Reverend Smyth: I would like
to go back to Dr Connolly who gave a very gracious answer about
EMU. As I understand it, that was the scheme where the church
leaders felt the finance had been taken away from them at an earlier
stage. Do I take it that you would support its restoration with
proper resources and proper guidelines? I picked up a long time
ago that schools were using it for their own advantage rather
than for the purpose for which it was brought into being.
Dr Connolly: If we are looking
at what should be done now, there is a whole citizenship curriculum
now which is being put forward and it will be on the books in
one or two years' time, the teachers are being trained. Certainly
in the 11 to 16 group that seems to have a lot of potential for
us to start addressing what should have been addressed through
EMU and Cultural Heritage. Rather than resurrecting something
like that, the citizenship curriculum could be a good way forward.
The problem is that most of the focus is on young people and I
would like to see some resources for Key Stage 2 in primary schools,
seven to 11 year olds, but there are things that can be done in
preparation with very young children. I would like to see a holistic
approach from three through to the end of compulsory schooling
where we start building upon these issues gradually and securely.
Q454 Mr Tynan: I was fortunate enough,
along with some of my colleagues, to visit the Peace Centre last
year and I know how beneficial that is to the people who are in
your care. Really the question of changing people's attitudes
obviously happens at Glencree and at the Peace Centre. You are
successful but you can only reach a limited amount of people.
To try and cure the problems in Northern Ireland would be very
difficult because of the amount of resources that would be required.
You said that you only have individuals who are willing to listen.
Is that really the target audience you want to reach or is there
not a need to target the people who really are not listening?
How could you do that?
Ms White: There are two different
programmes that we run. One of them targets high achievers, highfliers,
potential leaders who are educated to a level, and normally they
are willing to participate and to listen and contribute. The other
programme targets individuals who are living in areas of high
deprivation. When I say the basic aim is that they are willing
to listen, I mean they are willing to come on the course and participate.
Quite often they are very vociferous in their opposing views and
they are not willing to change their opinion. I think you have
to make it a basic principle that they will participate and stay
in the room physically while other people are expressing opposing
views. We are a small resource, we do not claim to make a great
impact, but we are doing our bit. At the moment we feel that in
order to get people through that programme and to a satisfactory
conclusion and to have them achieve anything you have got to have
people who are at least willing at the beginning to stay in the
room with people who have got different views. That is the premise
we start from. They are very, very vocal in their opposing opinions.
Q455 Mr Tynan: How do you see your
work impacting on `hate crime', or is there a way that it could
be developed further to impact on `hate crime'?
Ms White: Our basic premise—and
the work we are commenting on here is just a small part of an
overall series of programmes—is to try and encourage individuals
to understand that human beings are more similar than they are
different and that by being in a room together socialising, working
together and meeting people of different cultures, creeds and
races you can determine that people are individuals and you can
build bonds of friendship and that will overcome the prejudice.
Obviously it is a grand aim. The practical delivery of that is
limited by resources. As we go forward what we will achieve is
dependent upon our funding and our ability to get out there and
work in communities, but we are already undertaking work similar
to that in parts of Europe where it is required as well. The resource
issue is one of funding and personnel and the sky is the limit.
We are not claiming that we achieve everything. We are just one
small part of the puzzle.
Q456 Mr Tynan: How important is a
change of environment in your estimation as regards having a successful
conclusion and changing attitudes?
Mr Doyle: I think it can be very
beneficial in initiating a relationship in terms of bringing young
people out of their environment where they may be in conflict.
Our programmes show that it cannot be a one-off but that there
needs to be a sustained effort in terms of keeping up the conflict
when they do go back to their own communities. There have been
some cases of cross-community programmes where there is an initial
contact and people get on pretty well and one use of that initial
contact is to engage in some recreational rioting when they go
back to their own communities. It can have its drawbacks as well.
This is why there needs to be some system within individual communities.
If we had the resources, we could work in a more sustained way
in supporting local communities and promoting a cross-community
culture.
Q457 Mr Tynan: We have some inhabitants
in Scotland who attend football matches now and again who may
require your services some time in the future.
Mr Doyle: I think we have got
a lot to learn from each other maybe.
Q458 Chairman: You heard what the
four church leaders had to say on the subject of integrated education,
but it remains a fact that the department here has a statutory
duty to encourage and facilitate integrated education. I do not
think there is any question that they have not been very effective
at fulfilling this duty. The Glencree submission indicated that
education of itself will not work, it is integrated living that
counts more, but we have to start somewhere. What are your views
and attitudes about starting with the young in a small way to
try and teach them from a very early age within their educational
environment that they do not need to live separate lives from
those of a separate faith?
Mr McNeaney: One of the things
that our office did in its very early days was to commission research
from Queen's University comparing Northern Ireland society against
the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child and
we are just about to launch our corporate priorities based on
that research. Coming out of that research already are the significant
concerns expressed from young people and across Northern Irish
society about segregated education. Some of the elements needed
in terms of any strategy to address those issues we feel focus
on encouraging children to develop an appreciation and respect
for cultural diversity, and we have talked about the curriculum
already, and that is something we are going to target in terms
of art work and also education initiatives aimed at increasing
children's peace awareness and understanding of key historical
and political events associated with Northern Ireland, but that
needs to begin in primary schools, from the ages of about seven
or eight, if it is going to have any benefit. I think that will
have an impact in terms of the support that would be out there
in terms of integrated education. There is a raft of issues which
were rehearsed in the earlier evidence which I think I would support.
Q459 Chairman: Mr Doyle?
Mr Doyle: Integrated education
will not work by itself. It is certainly a part of the solution
and I would strongly support that personally. I grew up in a totally
segregated society, in a segregated primary school and secondary
school. I think one of the previous witnesses suggested that young
people in Northern Ireland meet when they go to university but
for me that certainly was not the case. I hung around with my
mates from home, which certainly was not ideal. I thought university
would be this Utopia where we would all get on together.
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