Segregating pupils by religion is a barrier to friendship

I’ll start with the similarities. My friend and I were the same age, the same size, with the same blonde hair and blue eyes. We both played the violin (or attempted to) and we both loved netball. We were friends for years, but that friendship had strict limits. For example, I can’t remember inviting her to any of my birthday parties. Why? Because she went to the Catholic school.

I was struck by a comment made by John Swinney on the very first edition of BBC Scotland’s new Debate Night show on Wednesday, in response to a question about how best to tackle sectarianism. Sir Tom Hunter had just told the audience that when he was young, play times involved stone-throwing battles between the nearby Catholic school and his own non-denominational one, despite pupils like himself having no idea why they were at war. The Education Secretary responded by highlighting “developments in educational approaches”, such as schools “sharing facilities, working together, and collaborating on aspects of their curriculum”.

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Such developments are not new – and a cynic might query whether an increase in co-operation is primarily aimed at breaking down barriers or saving money – but the key question is whether they really make a significant difference to how the pupils of segregated schools view each other.

My own experience was a little unusual in that there was no road between our two schools across which stones might have been hurled. Instead they shared a campus, with distinct classroom blocks joined by a shared gym and dining hall and surrounded by a shared playground and sports field.

The Catholic pupils must have passed through our side of the playground to get to the field during playtime and lunchtime – there was no physical border to prevent such freedom of movement – but there was no traffic in the other direction. They had their side, and we had ours. That’s just the way it was. I have memories of the division being enforced by a pretty fearsome jannie, whose home was situated right beside the unofficial checkpoint, but I’m not sure how reliable those memories are. It’s possible we didn’t actually need to be told to stay out, because we understood that – somewhere along the line – adults had made the decision that we should be kept apart.

That’s not to say we had negative feelings towards those we called “the Cathies” – slurs such as “Fenian” and “taig” were new to me when I moved to Glasgow in my early twenties – and I certainly don’t remember any sectarian stone-throwing. But just because we weren’t taught to hate each other, that doesn’t mean everything was rosy. After all, the starting point for any conflict between groups – be it over resources and opportunities, land or political power – is the establishment of a clear divide between “them” and “us”.

It was music that first helped chip away at the barrier between us. Our singing lessons took place in a room on the alien side of the campus, and for instrumental tuition we not only crossed into Catholic territory but learned alongside the Catholic children. Sport brought us even closer because when we represented our schools we played on the same team. My friend and I were desk partners for area concerts, sharing a music stand. We nimbly darted around the netball court in the positions of Wing Attack and Wing Defence. I don’t remember us ever having a conversation about religion, though I do remember the Catholic pupils grilling us about puberty during a minibus journey, and finding this bizarre (the penny didn’t drop about why they were so curious until I saw a production of Mary O’Malley’s 1970s comedy Once A Catholic at my liberal high school). I suppose we knew we were headed for different secondaries, and the likelihood of continuing our friendship was therefore slim.

All of the politicians on Debate Night spoke positively about denominational schools and the rights of parents to choose on the basis of ethos. But they also accepted that parents had a vital role to play if Scotland’s shameful history of sectarianism is to become just that – history. It’s worth asking what exactly it is about the ethos of Catholic schools that parents in the 21st century continue to find so different and important that it’s worth perpetuating divisions between young people, whose brains can soak up prejudices just as readily as times tables.

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The days are surely long gone when Catholic headteachers could choose to side-step sex education, dodge discussion of LBGT identities and teach myth as historical fact. Take these differences away and what’s left? Is it really so intolerable for children to be exposed to different ideas, different cultures and different religious traditions? Parents will still be free to instruct them in the rituals of a specific faith in evenings and at weekends.

Perhaps if my pal had lived next door – or even in the next street – our friendship would have developed beyond school. But for all that we ended up having in common, we’d been told we were different before we had even met. Are segregated social lives a price our politicians are happy to pay for keeping supporters of faith schools on side? If so, they should have the courage to say so.