Major Theme 1: GMGY Multi-Belief Programme

The GMGY Multi-Belief programme taught in Community National schools emerged as a major area of challenge for all of the interviewees. There were a number of sub-themes that

1.2% 22.2% 1.8% 0.6% 1.2% 5.4% 5.4% 5.4% 52.7% 4.2% Atheist Buddhist Christian Hindu Humanist Jehovah's Witness Jewish Muslim No Belief System Orthodox Catholic Roman Catholic Other (please specify)

0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0%

came under this heading and will be outlined below. Before examining the challenges posed by the programme, interviewees were also keen to acknowledge its strengths. There was agreement among all of the principals and teachers interviewed that the narrative approach used in GMGY is child-centred and this is its greatest strength. P4 stated:

They are really diverse stories, they are really well thought-out stories and I like that it is story-based... children can relate to that, it’s about living their lives to the full so there is a lot of potential for that in the programme.

T4 commended the emphasis given to the agency of the child in the programme; ‘they can all have their say… and their opinions and their voices are heard’. P6 also believed that the GMGY programme is a distinctive aspect of Community National schools and a reason why parents choose this school model. P5 acknowledged the depth of engagement the programme undergoes with the various committees associated with the programme’s development; ‘I think praise should be given for how it has been developed over the years that it’s constantly being reviewed’. P3 acknowledged the difficult task of the programme aims and its efforts to provide a programme and materials that brings children of all beliefs together.

Whilst the narrative approach was considered a strength among all of the interviewees, contrary evidence emerged in the interviews regarding the challenges facing this approach. A number of the interviewees spoke about GMGY becoming similar to a literacy lesson and not achieving the lesson’s learning outcomes. The potential to nurture the belief identity of the child was being lost. T1 stated:

At the moment it’s like another English lesson. I don’t think it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing really… because it’s a story and you are asking questions, it’s like an oral language lesson really and unless the children themselves are really in the know about their own faith I don’t think it really throws up any relevant questions.

P4 commented on the lack of autonomy given to teachers in the programme which resulted in a lack of engagement from the teachers with the preparation and delivery of the lessons:

The teachers are just following this programme word for word and not veering off it that much… but the effect of that is, well, it hasn’t much effect on the children. It could be a good literacy lesson.

P4 went on to say that while the stories were pitched well and full of possibility, ‘in terms of evoking, stimulating a really rich conversation around any sort of a religious or a belief perspective, for me and a lot of teachers I know it didn’t really happen’. T1 elaborated further stating that many teachers in her school ‘would be very afraid to talk about certain religions in case they say anything wrong’.

4.2.1 The Role of Parents

The engagement of parents with the GMGY lessons at home is central to the success of the programme (Murphy, 2013; NCCA, 2015). Most of the interviewees were doubtful that this was happening, particularly within indigenous Irish families. P7 argued that ‘the parents don’t know what’s in the programme, they don’t understand it…they have zero interaction with it in any school’. However, T4 observed that some faith communities did appear to engage with the GMGY programme at home:

I would very rarely see a child coming to GMGY with what you would see as their parents having backed up all this with a religious view. A lot of the time you would see it with Hindus or Muslims who are much more rooted in their faith.

It is interesting to note that contrary evidence to the interviewee’s assumptions arose in the questionnaire for parents. One of the questions in the questionnaire was how aware they were of the GMGY programme and 49% stated that they were very aware and engage with the material at home (Figure 4.2).

Figure 4.2 Parental Responses to Question 3

This contradicts the sense the teachers and principals have that the parents do not interact with the GMGY programme at home. However, 51% of the parents stated that they do not engage with GMGY, which is a bare majority of the respondents. A cross-tabulation of the survey data reveals that 56% of the parents who say that they engage with the GMGY programme with their children identify as Roman Catholic. 19% come under the broadly Christian category and 10% are Muslim. 7% of parents with no belief state that they engage with GMGY with their children at home.

Table 4.1. Identity of parents who engage or do not engage with GMGY Programme

Belief of Parents Engage with GMGY at Home

Do Not Engage with GMGY

Christian 19% 26% Hindu 1% 2.5% Jehovah’s Witnesses 2.4% 0 Muslim 10% 2% No Belief 7% 6% Orthodox 4% 12% Roman Catholic 56% 50% 49.1% 37.7% 9.0% 4.2%

How aware are you of the 'Goodness Me, Goodness You!' (GMGY) programme that seeks to nurture your child in his/her own belief? Tick one answer:

Very aware, we engage with the GMGY material at home

Vaguely aware, but we do not discuss GMGY at home Unaware

Although there is a small response rate from parents who are Jehovah’s Witnesses, they all engage with the GMGY programme at home. In the category of parents who state that they are vaguely aware or unaware or uninterested in the GMGY programme 50% are Roman Catholic parents. 12% are from the Orthodox traditions and 26% identify as Christian. Only 2% of Muslim parents say they do not engage with the programme and 6% are parents with no belief.

4.2.2 Belief Nurturing

The aim of belief nurturing within the GMGY programme emerged as a specific issue that the teachers and principals struggled with. The programme seeks to nurture the belief of all of the various beliefs in Community National schools. T5 described this as ‘impossible’. Others admitted that they don’t have the time or the expertise to consider how the story might connect to the religious identities of the different children in their class. T3 reinforced this and how difficult it is for teachers:

I suppose GMGY works from a presumption of the best of a belief. So if you are a practicing Catholic that is talking to your child about what they heard at mass every week, if you are teaching the child all the prayers, if you are discussing God at home then GMGY is going to allow you to access your religion without any issues. If you’re not then you run into difficulty and the teacher is put into a very compromising position.

P7 questioned whether Community National schools should even be seeking to nurture belief; ‘that word [nurture] is bandied around all the time and nobody actually knows what it means…how are we enriching faith? And have we the right to enrich faith?’.

Two of the interviewees spoke about how one of the Community National schools encountered a significant challenge when a cohort of parents from a minority belief asked to see some of the GMGY lessons and objected to the content and approach of the programme. After much dialogue with the parents the principal suspended the teaching of GMGY in the school as over one hundred parents from this belief tradition had withdrawn their children from the GMGY programme.

P7: They wanted belief specific teaching to cease, they wanted any indoctrination in terms of religion in the programme to be taken out, they wanted a more ethical programme.

The parents also had an issue with the classroom teachers, who were predominantly Irish Catholics, nurturing their child’s belief. T5 said, ‘that’s when you realised that things are very black and white for some people, they don’t see the niceties in comparing a prophet to a character in a children’s book’. T5 went on to describe the reaction of some of the parents to the GMGY programme:

‘We don’t teach our faith in that way’. ‘We don’t use those sort of methodologies to teach faith’…‘We will teach our children their faith in our own way, thank you very much but you don’t need to bother with that’.

4.2.3 Inter-belief Conversation

‘We have these rich stories, I think it needs to go further now and an area that needs to develop is inter-faith dialogue, I don’t think that that is fully there yet’ (T2)

One of the guiding principles of the GMGY programme is inter-belief conversation (NCCA, 2014). Teachers are required to act as facilitators of these conversations during GMGY lessons and encourage interaction between the children with different beliefs and cultures. It emerged in the data that many of the interviewees feel they and many of the teachers in their schools lack confidence in this area and shy away from ‘difficult conversations’. P5 stated:

My challenge is that I would feel that I don’t fully understand all the different faith groups and I’m nervous sometimes about ‘Am I being completely respectful?’

The GMGY programme emphasises that teachers do not need to be experts about the different beliefs to facilitate conversation between them in the classroom. P4 reinforced the importance of the agency of the child and the need for teachers to be good facilitators of ‘respectful dialogue’, ensuring ‘that nobody gets offended… to allow children, and give them that autonomy over what they are saying and to listen to those voices’.

However, T3 explained one of the challenges that arise for teachers who try to facilitate inter- belief dialogue:

A lot of our children are not religiously literate enough to have that conversation so once again, you are presuming that the parent has given the belief to the child and that child is versed in their own belief, which some children are. But the majority of children are not versed in their belief.

T1 also stated, ‘when they are four, five, six, they don’t know enough about their own faith to ask important questions or to really enter into dialogue that will actually have much meaning’.