Scottish Catholic Observer

Scotland is blessed with a huge number of truly spectacularly mountains. This is because we are uniquely gifted at shaping them from the tiniest of molehills. Recent events at Taylor High School in New Stevenston are a case in point. At their annual feast day Mass, a number of pupils decide to play truant and leave the property instead. An unfortunate event, but one that will be familiar to teachers in every school in the country. After the Mass, the teachers followed due diligence, and as protocol suggests they must, punished pupils who have left school property without permission.

And there the matter would rightfully have rested, but for one disgruntled teen phoning up the local paper anonymously to complain about the shocking unfairness of it all, that they be punished for breaking the rules.

The newspaper ran with it, and the rest of the Scottish press shambled after it, published a raft of ill-informed nonsense on the topic.

Before long, the good people of the Scottish Humanist Society had mounted their highest horses and were writing frantic letters to the education minister claiming the truants’ human rights had been violated and urging him to intervene in the matter at once.

A classic storm in a teacup. Still, the whole affair has been illuminating. The willingness of the humanists to encourage pupils to truant, merely underlines the fears of the rest of us that they are far more concerned about their endless trundling campaign to drive religion out of public life than they are about the rights and welfare of school children.

Their campaigns against Catholic education are an inevitable part of the waft and weave of modern life. Indeed, we should welcome the argument, as the quality and benefit of Catholic schools are undeniable if we have the wit to make the case. But encouraging children to truant, undermining teachers authority, is a step too far.