Learning to Live Together - Dr Brian Caul

On Good Friday 1998, the elected political leaders of Northern Ireland discovered new possibilities arising out of an intensive learning process. They realised that it was feasible to hold onto their fundamental values and at the same time listen to other arguments. A form of words was articulated through compromise which moved each participant forward in some respects while postponing or holding in reserve other aspirations. The importance of the process which led up to the announcement of the settlement on Good Friday cannot be under-stated. All participants held strong beliefs about their own identities and the sort of future society to which they could show allegiance. At the same time, they recognised that their ultimate models of government were literally anathema to others who represented substantial sections of the electorate. A modified form of democratic co-existence was devised which left open the possibility of further long-term change by persuasion and popular will. There are, at the same time, no illusions that some form of panacea has been achieved. After all, it is rare in life that once-and-for-all solutions are found. However what must now be consolidated and built upon is the new insight that identities are not destroyed by open engagement with perceived adversaries. On the contrary, integrity can be positively reinforced and at the same time stereotype prejudices and ill-informed demonisation can be set aside. Learning to listen to people whom one has grown up to hate can be the means not just of reaching a political accommodation but of eradicating one’s own internal cancerous growths. The one gable wall slogan that still rings true down the years is that “Sectarianism kills workers”.

Clearly the success of the new Northern Assembly will be dependent upon its capacity to open up new modes of North/South co-operation and joint action the following is offered from the sphere of third level education as a positive and hopeful example of what can be achieved. Two years ago, in the atmospheric surrounds of the Navan Fort Centre, County Armagh, a group of educationalists from the North and South convened the inaugural event of the Standing Conference for North/South Co-operation in Further and Higher Education. The basic idea was very simple. All third level institutions throughout the island were exhorted to form North/South partnerships be it in teaching, research, widening access or promoting staff and student exchanges. Rabbi Julia Neuberger addressed the inaugural conference with passionate enthusiasm breathing self-belief into the initiative.
An immediate outcome of this conference was the formation of a Steering Committee comprised of representatives of all the tertiary sector North and South, and key organisations such as the National Union of Students, Union of Students in Ireland and AHEAD, the association working for improved access and equal rights for students with disabilities. Within a few months, the Steering Committee received a heartening boost when the Nuffield foundation agreed to fund the work of the Committee and three of its proposed projects.
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Subsequently much energy was directed at developing these projects. Colleagues from Trinity College Dublin worked tirelessly with counterparts in Northern Institutes of Further and Higher Education and the University of Ulster in workshop debates under the theme of “Training Personal Tutors”. This project will reach completion in the autumn of 1998 with the publication of guidelines for effective personal tutor models which support the student learning experience and help realise their full potential.
NUS/USI has played the major role in other projects. Students from cross border colleges Fermanagh, Sligo, Armagh and Monaghan have been engaged in workshops which aim to develop leadership skills in tomorrow’s community leaders. These skills, in addition to generic communication strategies, also include the handling of conflict and the ability to negotiate. The worlshop coincided with episodes of raw sectarianism which were threatening to polarise the post -16 students in one of the northern colleges.
“Managing Adversity”, the other project, describes our attempts to encourage third level institutions throughout the islandto adopt policies which address sectarianism and promote pluralism. While much useful work was carried out by the NUS/USI Student Centre in collaboration with northern colleges, there was some uncertainty about the best way to engage colleagues in the South in this debate. The Steering Committee eventually decided to broaden the theme of “Managing Diversity” to incorporate the whole spectrum of equality and access issues in the tertiary sector, North and South, and to convene our second major conference at Malahide, Co. Dublin in March as a forum for discussion, reflection and action.
To the immense gratification of the Steering Committee there was such support from all parts of the island for the conference that a second Hotel had to be booked to take the overflow. The context, provided by Professors Bob Osborne of UU and Pat Clancy of UCD was one of continuing need to widen participation particularly among the lower socio-economic groups. At a policy level, the respective chairpersons of the Northern Ireland Higher Education Council, Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, and the Repuplic’s Higher Education Authority, Dr Don Thornhill, discussed various strategies to realise the targets of greater participation, and the political agenda for change was addressed vigorously by Michael Martin, the Repuplic’s Minister for Education and Science, and Mr Peter Holmes Deputy Secretary of the Department of Education for Northern Ireland. A wide array of workshops also took place including such themes/topics as: North/South entry qualifications; lessons to be learnt from CBI/BEC co-operation; international student mobility in Ireland North and South; the medical sensor research partnership between DCU and UU; the use of video-conferencing for jointly validated postgraduate studies at Magi College, University College Galway and the Institute of Technology at Athlone. One of the most challenging workshops led by representatives of the northern Cultural Traditions Group and University College Cork looked at “the hidden curriculum” which influences even the very educational process itself.
It is the intention of the Steering Committee to prolong the life of the Standing Conference alongside the emerging North/South institutions which will follow in the wake of the new northern Assembly. One useful area of activity, for instance, could be the completion of an audit of the wide range of existing North/South further and higher education partnerships, and provision of an accurate up-to-date database. Another significant contribution would be the initiation of a new project analysing the potential for harmonisation between entrance qualifications in the North and the South. A glaring reality remains that the number of northern Protestant students travelling to the Repuplic to study is negligible and even then centred mainly on Trinity College. This obviously an attitudinal question but establishing a clearer system of qualification recognition would at least remove one impediment.
One of the fundamental discoveries of the Standing Conference Steering Committee over the last two years has been that the bastions of higher education are by no means immune from the conflict in Northern Ireland. While there are not necessarily regular florid examples of the sectarianism on campus, the northern institutes have been slow to recognise the importance of taking a proactive stance to promote a positive anti -sectarian ethos. In the South ,there has been an apparent lack of identification or worse, a desire to label sectarianism as a Northern problem with no relevance to the Repuplic. However the saving grace exists in the increasing efforts now being made by tertiary sector institutions all over the Island to engage in productive partnerships which will benefit immensely in the North and the South.
True learning is a process of transformation. After three hundred years of transmitted history and self-fulfilling prophesy, perhaps we are now at last able to listen , learn, and begin a wonderful new era of fruitful co-operation.