Letters: Education is key to halt sectarianism

I READ with great interest Duncan Hamilton's piece on sectarianism (Insight, 24 April) and agree with him that sectarianism is "a major problem which is polluting the Scottish brand".

In his column in the same day's paper Tom English accused the SNP of being "asleep at the wheel" when it comes to challenging this blight on our society.

If evidence of this is required, look to the SNP Government's decision to axe the 100,000 fund to encourage and develop school twinning projects, a decision made in 2008 - the early days of the administration and before the phrase "credit crunch" had even been coined.

These initiatives had been making huge strides in breaking down barriers with a range of imaginative projects. There was deep disappointment among those involved in these projects at the SNP's decision and warnings to government that any anti-sectarianism strategy without education at its heart would not be fit for purpose.

Given that Mr Hamilton served as an advisor to SNP leader Alex Salmond during the last session of Parliament I would be curious to know if he at any time advised his boss of the folly of this decision.

Dave Scott, Edinburgh

TOM Devine's claim that "Scots of Irish Roman Catholic descent finally achieved occupational parity with their fellow Scots in the 1990s, though this was nearly a full century after their Irish-American cousins did so in the US" is disingenuous to say the least (Insight, 24 April).

Employment law is a Westminster competency which applies to all of the United Kingdom and to everyone, regardless of their religion. There are only two laws in the 1990s to which Devine might be referring: the Employment Rights Act 1996, which says nothing about religion, and the Human Rights Act 1998.

Therefore, Devine could just as truthfully have written, "Scots of Protestant descent finally achieved occupational parity with their fellow Scots of Irish Roman Catholic descent in the 1990s, though this was nearly a full century after their Scots Protestant cousins did so in the US".

Alistair McConnachie, Glasgow

IN THE last few weeks your paper and other media outlets have given much coverage to the Scottish sectarianism problem.

But there has been little mention of Scotland's shameful religiously divided education system. If we continue to take five-year-old Catholic and Protestant children and mark them out as separate by placing them in different schools we will perpetuate the disgraceful and outdated religious divide.

We need our politicians to ignore the Catholic Church, be courageous and abolish this outdated and unnecessary division.

Craig Wilson, address withheld