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It is notable, even after decades of inter-communal murder and mayhem, that some people in Northern Ireland still haven't grasped the importance of expressing the commonality of the province's "two tribes", but prefer to promote and encourage difference.
There has been an ongoing debate up there on the merits of non-denominational education for as long as I can remember.
Given how there is still much hatred and distrust between the "Catholic" and "Protestant" communities - I use quotation marks as even the relatively irreligious, in a normal sense, might describe themselves as such up there - most might imagine that properly integrating these communities would be in everyone's interests.
Sadly, however, there are those who make a living from sectarianism on both sides. In the past, whenever workers from the two backgrounds showed signs of uniting on a class basis, the bosses used the politicians and preachers to stir up old sectarian hatreds.
Apart from a few neanderthals such as Óglaigh na hÉireann/Continuity IRA and the Real IRA, who brought us Omagh, very few people have a desire to return to the era of day-by-day sectarian murders. However, there is still a distinct distance between the two communities in general and a lack of mixing that any continent-dwelling denizen, for whom the religious wars stay firmly in the history books, would find puzzling.
It is plausible that properly integrated education could bring the communities together within a few generations, so surely non-religious, secular schools would make sense in that regard? People can have their religions - anachronistic as they are - if they like, but they don't have to be promoted and funded by the State.
Now we have another distraction, as evidenced by this article about a gaelscoil in Cookstown. Cultural nationalist party Sinn Fein is in favour of these, as they promote difference. If that "difference" had not been carefully cultivated in the past, the Shinners - and loyalist counterparts such as Paisley, the IRA's best recruiting agent in his prime - would never have had a look-in.
It is ironic that the neo Gaelicism promoted by the Shinners and other cultural nationalists makes the prospect of their dream - a reunited Ireland - ever more unrealistic. While at the same time making the prospect of one peaceful, united community in Northern Ireland even less likely.
What's next? Ulster-Scots medium schools?
Then we will know there really is no hope.
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