Together – Yet Divided

By Ally Kruse, DIS Cross Cultural Communications student, spring 2015

Principal Murtagh in front of the peace wall behind Hazelwood. The peace wall was built after the 1998 peace agreement that ended the violence in Belfast. //Photo by Ally Kruse, spring 2015.

After 30 years, Patricia Murtagh is still waiting for the day that her child can get up and go to the school at the end of the road. But this is Belfast, Northern Ireland and 30 years after the area was rocked by sectarian violence, kids as young as three are being divided along religious lines. Only six percent of Northern Irish schools are integrated, the rest separated as Protestant or Catholic.

Patricia Murtagh is the principal of one of these integrated schools, Hazelwood Primary School, located in North Belfast. She helped found the school in 1985 in downtown Belfast, during a high point of violence known here as “The Troubles”.

In simple terms, the Troubles were a violent political conflict between the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland and the Protestant majority. The Catholics were mostly pro-Republic of Ireland, wanting Northern Ireland to be part of the Republic while Protestants were loyal to the United Kingdom and the British crown. The violence broke out in the late 1960s and continued for a better part of 30 years.

Despite having no funding in the beginning, Murtagh’s school population grew steadily and they eventually moved to a larger location on Whitewell Road.

At the time Murtagh remembers, Whitewell Road was a more loyalist (loyalists and Protestant often being used interchangeably) working class neighborhood that saw a fair deal of conflict during the Troubles. Today, the area has a growing Catholic population. The population of the neighborhood doesn’t usually matter, because most kids are sent to public schools that are either Protestant or Catholic, starting in what we call elementary school straight through college. Teachers at these schools often have only been trained in one tradition, with minimal exposure to the other side.

Even Hazelwood still teaches religion, very different from public schools in the U.S. The core syllabus is Christian based, explained Murtagh, and on Fridays the class is split between Protestants and Catholics for respective religious teachings. I.e. the Catholic kids learn all the information they need to go through the seven sacraments.

“If we could separate education and religion it would be great,” says Murtagh. However, what’s important in the current situation, she points out, is that all actions are explained to the children. They take comparative religion courses and are given a wide view on a variety of social issues.

And of course there’s the factor of time. The children attending Hazelwood today don’t see the conflict the same way their predecessors had. The conflict is mostly a foreign concept to them.

Of course, that is not a sign of that the past is forgotten. Kids still feel the division of religion and politics in their education. Even behind Hazelwood, a tall wire fence, called a “Peace Wall”, runs along the edge of the plot, there to protect the mostly Catholic community behind it. It was built after the 1998 peace agreement.

“We see the opportunities that have been missed,” says Murtagh of the ongoing peace process between leaders of the two communities, begun in 1994. And yet she hopes that schools like Hazelwood can help bridge the gap between the communities by starting with the youth. Maybe soon the peace process will find an end, a solid date to mark the final end of the Troubles’ legacy in the history books.

Artwork done by students at Hazelwood Primary. Murtagh says the schools makes an effort to give the kids a wide world view, especially on social issues and especially for older kids. Hazelwood College, an integrated high school, is just up the road from the primary school. //Photo by Ally Kruse, spring 2015.

Hazelwood Primary hosts kids from as young as three at their nursery school, to eleven, from all backgrounds. In order to be considered integrated by the Department of Education there must be a balance of backgrounds. Murtagh believes its somewhere around 40-40-20 for percentages of Protestants, Catholics, and other religions. //Photo by Ally Kruse, spring 2015

The sign reads “I think Hazelwood is a great school because the teachers are all fantastic and understanding. Hazelwood gives us a chance to meet children from different back grounds [sic] and make new friends.” //Photo by Ally Kruse, spring 2015.