Northern Ireland is failing its new generation: “I had to take off my blazer and my jumper, just in case anyone would confront me”

MILENA BESWICK & BAS BROUWER

The segregated education system is falling through the cracks in Northern Ireland, neglecting the younger generation and perpetuating the divide between the population.

Entering the city centre of Belfast on a Sunday afternoon there’s no apparent signs of any segregation. A market is taking place in front of the town hall, gathering a vibrant crowd of young people. But what can’t be seen on the immediate surface is the reality many young adults have to face growing up in a post-Troubles society.

The history of Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement

Divided childhoods

Seventeen year old Natasha Flanagan grew up in a predominantly catholic area in West Belfast, daughter of a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, also commonly referred to as a ‘Haffer Jaffer’. She attends an all-girls Catholic school, currently finishing her final exams.

Growing up she wasn’t always aware of the segregation, however at the age of five when she attended a birthday party in a Protestant part of town, it became apparent. The birthday girl was turning seven, the age when Catholics get to experience their first communion.

“I thought, oh my God, you’re making your first communion this year and she said ‘what, what’s that?’ I told her you get to wear a white dress and all sorts. My mom overheard me and said ‘Natasha, you can’t speak about that here. Don’t say that.’ As I could’ve put myself or my mom in danger,” Natasha recollects.

Moments from Natasha’s life, her communion, in school her uniform and friends. Photo credit: Private

30 minutes East of Belfast, 17 year old Iona, is facing a different reality growing up in a Protestant community in Newtownards, currently finishing her final exams in a secondary school in Belfast. Religion has always played a massive part in her childhood. She’s been going to church all her life and adheres to Protestantism.

Despite going to an almost fully Protestant school on a paramilitary estate, which marked their territory with British-propagating flags and posters, Iona was never aware of the segregation when she was younger.

“I didn’t know what Catholics were, I didn’t even know I was Protestant. It wasn’t a thing,” she says.

Iona in her school uniform, current and as a kid. As well as hanging out with friends and family. Photo credit: Private

A question of cultural identity

Ralph Schöllhammer, professor at Webster University and an expert on cultural identity, states that even though you are authentically Irish on paper, you’re not authentically Irish culturally or as an identity. If you have no emotional attachment to it, it’s not really your identity.

“When you encounter people that share the same feeling, that share that passion and allegiance towards a specific thing, whatever it is, you will automatically feel a certain connection, a sense of belonging,” he says.

Schöllhammer explains that growing up in a segregated society can be problematic. “From a personality viewpoint, being an individual that is growing up in the tension field between two very different value systems is very stressful.” 

Asking Natasha, growing up in West Belfast, she would see the Irish flag or the Union Jack in her neighbourhood, but wouldn’t think anything of it. “It’s not until you start learning about it at a certain age, you realise, oh, this isn’t quite normal,” she says.

Iona recollects a memory from her childhood, where she noticed the differences for the first time. “One day I saw several Catholic families, wearing tricolours and GAAs, the Irish sport tops. I assumed they were Protestant. That showed the lack of knowledge I had,” she says. 

Dr. Deena Haydon, independent researcher and policy consultant in Northern Ireland, who’s done various research on the youth of Northern Ireland, states that children have very few opportunities to meet children from other communities, because they go to segregated schools and attend social activities in their local communities. 

Haydon refers to a woman called Madeline Leonard, when explaining the youth perspective. “She was asking children what their views were of the Peace Walls in Belfast. They were so much a part of what was at the end of their street, that they didn’t see them as walls dividing them from somebody else.”

When Iona reached her teenage years and started attending drama school, she began to experience segregation up close, because most of her classmates were Catholic. “I had never felt like a fish out of water in my life, but suddenly I walked into a place where I was the minority. It was really stark, because I felt like an outsider.”

However, it didn’t stop Iona from getting to know her classmates. It was the first time she made Catholic friends. The conversations they had about each other’s cultures, religious and political beliefs made the teenage girl realise that they grew up in two completely different worlds.

The fear of the other side

The divide between Nationalist and Unionist areas has left its mark in the minds of many young adults, who are hyper aware of their surroundings and the places they enter. Natasha had to accompany her mom to Shankill, an area that’s two minutes down the road. A place she’s never been, because it’s Unionist.

“I was wearing my school uniform, which is bright blue with a tartan skirt and you could tell that’s a nationalist school from a mile away. My mom said I had to take off my blazer and my jumper, just in case anyone would confront me.”

Deena Haydon explains that the difficulty in celebrating your identity is usually on the basis of hostility towards anybody outside that community. 

Last month there was some violence by paramilitaries again and due to that Iona experienced anxiety. “My usual daily walk is through one of the estates and I’m scared to walk home from school. It has created a climate of fear and it makes me realise that we’re living in the shambles.” Iona says.

Because young people don’t get a chance to interact with people on the other side of the divide, gaps are left open for paramilitaries to step in and fill something of a leadership void, says Ben Rosher, political sociologist at Queen’s University.

“These people weren’t alive during The Troubles. Instead, they’ve been told by old men, who should know better, that this is what they should do for their communities. This isn’t purely due to separation of education, but it’s a broader intersectional issue that’s part of the dysfunctional politics of Northern Ireland that lets young people down,” he states.

Iona has had family members who had close paramilitary links to the conflict. Something that has reflected on her life as well. “The hardest part is hearing the conversations and knowing that my family, people I see as a whole human being, had links to it when they were younger.”

The teenager differentiate herself from the crimes that happened and the people that her family members are today. Her and her peers say they live in a post-conflict society and therefore experience a hereditary brokenness that has been passed on to their generation.

A new generation’s identity 

As a new generation is growing up in Northern Ireland, a new view of society is prevailing and the need of not only being limited to identifying as Unionist or Nationalist, but just Northern Irish is growing.

Iona’s identity in terms of nationality is not that important to her. It’s more within her faith, friends and in what she does. “I do think it’s important to have pride in where you come from.”

Natasha also struggles to pick either side. “I wouldn’t say I lean more towards the Nationalist side than I do towards the Unionist side, because there’s just a lot more that comes with that.”

“I think it would be important to see if there’s a Northern Irish identity. Is it really something that exists as a thing of its own? I think that is a key question,” Schöllhammer says.

“It also emancipates you to some extent from the original community. So I think we see a new form of emancipation from the younger towards the older generation,” he adds.

Ben Rosher agrees that more people identify as being neither nationalist nor unionist. “They’re more concerned with the day-to-day running of Northern Ireland rather than being focused primarily on the constitutional questions.”

A broken education system

When it comes to education Iona describes the segregated system in Northern Ireland in one word, shocking. “I wish we had a government who would actually act on it. Because by growing up together, you would see less division in each other’s differences.”

According to Mark Langhammer, secretary at the National Education Union, the segregated system is one of the most central problems within the Northern Ireland education system. Ten years ago, the OECD’s benchmark placed the country at the 34th place out of 34 countries. “Our system is good in some parts, but its weaknesses are quite fatal, such as high communal segregation.”

Natasha doesn’t agree with segregation. “I think it’s stupid and it’s just going to cause more divide, but even if my school wasn’t segregated, it would always be a Catholic school due to the area it’s located.”

The division between the two education systems is mostly visible within the urban areas, such as Belfast and Derry. “Parents might want to send their children to an integrated school, but the safety of doing so isn’t always assured,” Langhammer says.

Another factor that impacted the failure of the education system is that there are too many small schools within the country. “The positive thing is that they’re quite intimate. However, the smaller the school, the more narrow the curriculum choices can be. This means that schools not only need to integrate but also merge with each other,” he adds.

The segregated schools can be represented by teachers with a biased opinion. Throughout her history GCSEs, Iona experienced bias from her history teacher. During a class about the Irish constitution and the emergence of Ireland and Northern Ireland as two separate countries, it became clear that the teacher in question was a Unionist. “She made snide remarks about certain political groups and certain people within history. We weren’t interested in her opinion, but just the facts. I think, if we had a teacher from another country there would be less bias.” 

Within the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland has the highest proportion of early school leavers and the lowest proportion of university graduates. A third of young people go to university in Great Britain and two thirds of them never come back.

According to Mark Langhammer this is due to young people wanting to spread their wings and leave the narrow minded and segregated places in which they grew up behind.

Speaking truth to power

An organisation trying to make a difference for the younger generation is the Northern Ireland Youth Forum located in the heart of Belfast. The forum is youth led by 11- to 25-year olds and aims to create a platform to amplify the voices of young people.

Nicole Kelly-Parkinson, vice chair of the organisation, has been working at the youth forum since the summer of 2021 and is dedicated to helping the youth that hasn’t been as lucky as her growing up, having had the opportunity to attend an integrated school.

“I see so much potential here. I want to stay and invest in it, be part of the growth as opposed to going somewhere else where it’s already booming,” Nicole says.

The youth forum focuses on social issues such as mental health support and cross and community peace building projects. They also try to get the youth perspective across to politicians by attending different events throughout the year. “Our big mantra is about speaking truth to power,” she states.

To help the younger generation, charities are picking up the work that the government hasn’t done. However, they are currently losing 40 percent of their funding due to budget cuts as there’s no current government in place and no one to fight against it.  “A lot of the most vulnerable young people access these charities, where does that leave them? If you want your country to prosper, you need to invest in the young talent that’s coming through, which the politicians overlook,” Nicole Kelly-Parkinson states

Day to day life at the youth forum consists of encouraging the young people who themselves are passionate about changing Northern Ireland for the better.

A low-skilled economy

Despite some people desiring a unification between Northern Ireland and Ireland, it seems that the two countries aren’t ready yet, at least not economically. “The Northern Irish educational attainment of the labour force is very different from the Republic,” says John FitzGerald, professor of economics at Trinity College Dublin.

The vast bulk of the very substantial immigration into Ireland are very well educated. Therefore, the labour force would be predominantly people with high qualifications and skills,” the economist says.

The Northern Irish economy, on the other hand, is quite low-skilled. It requires graduate skills for about twenty percent of the jobs.

The Northern Irish economy is very dependent on the support of the UK government. And for the Republic to fund that gap it would probably reduce standard living in the Republic by a lot.

The nightmare scenario, according to John FitzGerald, would be if Northern Ireland votes for unity and the Republic votes against it, because it’s too expensive. “Both countries have to have separate referendums. People need to be faced with the problems a unification could have. They should know the full details and what it means for them, such as how it might affect their job prospects.”

Becoming an independent country also doesn’t seem like a good idea. The professor estimates the costs would be immense. “There would be a dramatic drop in the standard of living and then young people would just leave, they’re the ones who are likely to be most productive. This would have social consequences which could lead to social unrest.”

Natasha agrees that it would be impossible for Northern Ireland to become independent, but thinks that if the country is left alone and has no outside influence, it will also have a chance to improve its problems and therefore learn to depend on itself.

As of now, remaining part of the UK appears to be the most beneficial for the country economically. Northern Ireland is not only part of the UK economy, but also the EU internal market, giving them a particular advantage if they want to produce consumer goods within the EU.

It would pose many challenges if the gap between the two economies remains as large as it is today. “It seems Northern Ireland first needs to improve its own economy first before it’s ready for unification,” FitzGerald concludes.

The future of Northern Ireland

Both girls think Northern Ireland would be better off by remaining part of the United Kingdom. “I’m not opposed to a reunification, but I would just be concerned about the conflict breaking out again”, Iona says.

The idea of a possible unification even terrifies Natasha. “When the Northern Ireland Protocol came out, there were a lot of riots on the streets. People were getting angry and it scared me. Now, politicians haven’t even brought up the talk of a united Ireland. If they do, the possibility of a new Troubles breaking out, would be very likely.”

To accept what happened in the country’s past, Iona states that reconciliation on a human level is very necessary and desired in Northern Ireland, but that it mostly gets ignored. “We’re in this period of stuckness where we cannot move any further. There has to be a mindset transformation and that’s where reconciliation starts. That would be my hope and prayer for this country.”

According to Deena Haydon it’s mostly politicians that keep focusing on the past and how their communities were affected, whereas young people want to know how the past has reflected in today’s society and how it will affect the future. “They feel politicians aren’t representing their interests and focus too much on the division between them.”

After finishing secondary school, Iona is planning to study in Northern Ireland. “It’s not only half as cheap to study here, but I also feel like I could bring something to the table.” Her plan is to study anthropology and English at Queen’s University in Belfast and then pursue a master’s degree in journalism.

Natasha’s approach to the future is different, she wants to work in the TV industry and envisions herself moving to London in the future. “It’s not secure enough for me to stay in Northern Ireland. I think once I take myself out of that environment, I will see how much it affects my way of thinking.”