Lessons from Italy’s catastrophic demographic decline

Last year, Italy, my country, recorded just 355,000 births in a population of about 59 million. That corresponds to a fertility rate of 1.14 children per woman of childbearing age, one of the lowest in Europe and indeed in the world. Around 650,000 Italians are now dying each year. You can see the direction of travel. It is catastrophic.

Italy, unfortunately, has a long history of below-replacement-level birth rates. Economic factors certainly matter, but a recent television programme suggested that the crisis goes deeper. Among the guests, the president of the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe (FAFCE), Vincenzo Bassi, offered a compelling diagnosis: it is also about loneliness, trust, culture and the way society imagines the future.

The programme began with interviews with Italian university students. Some said they would like children, but only after their thirties. Others were unsure they would ever be able to afford a family. One young woman described lifelong commitment as an “encumbrance”; another said having children had become “almost a luxury.” Several spoke of uncertainty, not only about their own prospects, but about the state of the world itself.

Vincenzo Bassi did not deny the economic pressures, but he argued that the central problem is more existential and social. “The real problem is loneliness,” he said. A society may offer tax breaks and incentives, but if men and women feel isolated, unsupported and mistrustful, policies alone will struggle to reverse the decline.

Bassi also insisted that demography must be seen as part of any serious discussion of sustainable development. “Sustainable development is not possible without intergenerational balance,” he said. Children should not be viewed as a burden on public finances, but as part of a society’s human capital and future stability.

His remarks also carried a cultural and communal dimension. Too often, demographic decline is treated as something relevant only to families. Bassi reminds us that it affects everyone. A society without children is not simply poorer in numbers; it is weaker in continuity, solidarity and hope.

He suggested that birth rates might look different if they were measured not just across territories, but within real communities where people feel less alone. Later, reflecting on examples from Trentino-Alto Adige, the region in the North-East of Italy which has the highest fertility rate, Bassi highlighted their family-friendly environments. “Families, when they are in a network, are more stable and more generative”, he claimed.

After Bassi, the programme turned to the medical dimension of delayed parenthood with gynaecologist Maurizio Guida. His intervention was brief but blunt. Social expectations may have changed, he said, but biology has not. “The social change does not coincide with a change in human physiology.” Many young adults now imagine their thirties as the natural time to begin thinking about children. Yet Guida warned that female fertility declines sharply after 35 and falls further after 42 or 43.

Taken together, Bassi and Guida offered a powerful diagnosis. Italy’s birth crisis is not only about the economy. It is about loneliness, weak communities, cultural uncertainty, and a society that often ignores the conditions in which family life can flourish. Unless those deeper realities are faced, the country will continue to drift into demographic decline.

The problems with the new primary school curriculum

 

The Department of Education has published the redeveloped Primary School Curriculum. It contains five broad subject areas and they will be all rolled out in schools over the next few months. Last year, during the consultation process, the Iona Institute presented concerns about the draft proposals, concerns that have now been confirmed by what has been presented.

For example, compared with the previous version from 1999, the new curriculum has downgraded the place of religion and spirituality. It remains the case that patron bodies such as the Catholic Church can still emphasise religion, but nonetheless it is depressing to see the Irish State demote it compared with 26 years ago. The new Wellbeing Specification goes even further in this regard.

“Being spiritual” is one of the key components of “being well” in the Primary Curriculum Framework, yet the Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) specification omits it. Although the “spiritual” dimension is acknowledged in principle, no specified curriculum outcomes or learning content give shape to this. There is a clear mismatch between the framework’s ambition and the specification’s content. It offers no concrete outcomes or content linked to religious practice, even though extensive evidence shows that religious faith, communal worship, and spiritual identity contribute significantly to psychological wellbeing, mental health, life purpose, and social cohesion.

Marriage, another foundational social institution, is similarly neglected. The relationships programme does not explicitly mention marriage. Given the strong empirical evidence on how stable marriage benefits individuals, especially children, and society at large, its absence is conspicuous. For children learning about family, relationships, responsibility and social structures, not to include marriage as a topic undermines completeness, leaving out a significant part of many children’s lives.

A further item to note is the treatment of sexual orientation in the curriculum. One of the learning outcomes for 5th and 6th classes is that students will “begin to understand sexual orientation as describing attraction to someone of a different gender, the same gender or more than one gender.” This marks a shift: sexual orientation is now defined in terms of gender, not sex. Why then is it called “sexual”? Gender as a category is not tied to objective biology but to social or psychological identity, which is subjective and fluid. Also, what does “more than one gender” mean?

We also see a strange choice in the supporting materials for the Social and Environmental Education curriculum. Three topics are mentioned: the history of the GAA, the 1916 Rising — both of which play an important role in Irish identity — and then “The History of Buddhism and its continuing influence on modern life.” Buddhism has little historical significance in Ireland, or in Western society, compared with Christianity (especially Catholicism). According to the most recent Census, there are fewer than 10,000 Buddhists in Ireland, in a population of more than 5 million. Why such an emphasis on an essentially marginal tradition, at the expense of more deeply rooted ones?

These omissions and inconsistencies point to a curriculum that is less reflective of Ireland’s cultural heritage.

In our submission, we also raised concerns about how appropriate it is for primary school children to engage in political discussion. The Social and Environmental Education (SEE) curriculum specification states that “learning in SEE provides opportunities for children to explore and think critically about social and environmental justice issues from different perspectives.” But can such discussions genuinely take place without being shaped, even inadvertently, by the views of the adult in the room, particularly if that teacher holds strong political opinions?

Denominational schools under the spotlight at UN committee

 

On Wednesday, Ireland’s human rights record will once again be under the scrutiny of a United Nations committee. As discussed in a previous blog, more pressure will be heaped on us to make our abortion law even more permissive. But our education system will come under scrutiny, with objections being raised to our mainly denominational schools.

The Humanist Association of Ireland (HAI) complains to the Human Rights Council – the body Ireland will be appearing before as part of our ‘periodic review’ of how well we are implementing certain human right commitments- that there are no fully secular schools in Ireland, as even Educate Together are multi-denominational, they say, even though they are really non-denominational.

The HAI complain that the State funds schools that “inculcate particular religious beliefs”, and that this “serves to perpetuate segregation and division.”

They ask Ireland to accelerate the divestment of State-funded schools from religious patronage, and to create schools which “would not permit faith formation of any kind during the school day”.

A similar view can be found in the submission presented by Atheist Ireland, together with the Evangelical Alliance and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

This atypical coalition of atheists and believers, for instance, recognises that Catholic schools at primary level cannot give enrolment preference to children of Catholic families, while Church of Ireland and other minority faith schools are still allowed to favour members of their communities. But Atheist Ireland and its allies want this privilege to be removed.

In practice, they want to deny minority groups the right to achieve their primary function. What is the point of a Jewish school if it cannot serve its own Jewish community first? Likewise for a Presbyterian or Church of Ireland school, not to mention a Catholic one.

Atheist Ireland and its allies lament that 90pc of primary schools in Ireland are Catholic. Because of this, they say, it is nearly impossible for atheists, Muslims, Evangelicals or other minority faiths, to be teachers in most schools if they don’t study a basic course that would include catechesis and Catholic religious education. But what is the alternative?

The Iona Institute has some sympathy for these views. There is not enough school choice in Ireland, and we have been arguing for more divestment ever since we launched in 2007.

At the same time, we strongly believe in public funding of denominational schools, provided enough parents want this, in addition to whatever other types of schools there is sufficient public demand for.

We would also point out that parents are the primary educators of their children and within very broad limits schools should follow the wishes of parents. This is recognised in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights which says clearly: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.”

It also says, “Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages”. This means public funding, but public funding of the sort of schools parents want.

Therefore, if the UN Human Rights Council is true to the UN’s most important human rights document, it can only find that there isn’t enough school choice in Ireland. If it declares against denominational schools in general, it will be going against what the UN itself believes about this matter.

Funding of Church schools is commonplace across Europe

The impression is often given that there is something very and unusual, not to mention undemocratic, about religious schools receiving public funds. In fact, it is absolutely normal. What is unusual is faith schools receiving no public funds.  What is more, the Irish education system is one of the freest in the world, that is, one of the freest from State control.

An article in Studies by Paul Meany, a former principal of Marian College in Dublin, shows that the Irish system is “underpinned by the same principles and philosophies that operate in most of the countries of the world”.

He points out that Cuba, North Korea and Gambia are among the only countries where only State schools are permitted. Even China has some private schools.

Non-State schools are often run by religious institutions. For centuries, the Churches have been a major educational pillar worldwide, before there was ever much of a State to talk about.

Meany highlights a number of international covenants and conventions, including the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which affirm the right of parents to how their children educates in line with their values and convictions.

The Charter notes “the freedom to found educational establishments with due respect for democratic principles and the rights of parents to ensure the education and teaching of their children in conformity with their religious, philosophical and pedagogical conviction shall be respected, in accordance with the national laws governing the exercise of such freedom and right” (art. 14).

The OIDEL (Organisation Internationale pour le Droit à l’Education et la Liberté d’Enseignement) is an international organization that was established in 1985 to defend freedom of education.

In 2016 they published a Freedom of Education Index to evaluate how much the State facilitates, through legislation and funding, the exercise of this fundamental right.

Ireland is the highest ranked country in the Freedom of Education Index, followed by the Netherlands, Belgium, Malta, Denmark and the UK. Twenty of the top thirty countries worldwide are in Europe.

The Index looks at a number of indicators such as the percentage of non-governmental schools in primary level, the level of public funding for such schools, etc.

About 30pc of primary and secondary students in Europe are in Catholic schools. Many more are in Protestant-run schools. In Ireland, 73% of the school population attend Catholic institutions.

The only countries where the number of Catholic schools is a significantly low when compared to the size of the Catholic population are Poland, Croatia and Lithuania. This is a legacy of Communism. The State still controls almost all educational institutions and such schools were only established in the last thirty years.

Meany reckons that it is not easy to compare funding for non-governmental schools across Europe as statistics often do not separate staff salaries from grants for running costs and grants for capital costs.

However, only in five European countries does the State provide no funding at all to non-governmental schools. In two countries the State pays for salaries and running costs at the same rate as public schools, and in the remaining twenty-one countries schools receive very substantial funding.

Ireland is not an exception. State funding is so common because without adequate financial support, freedom of education, which include the children’s right to receive an education respecting their family’s beliefs, would be practically restricted.