McAdoo says he wanted to attend an integrated school but was sent to Drumglass High School, a state secondary school whose pupils were predominantly Protestant or unionist. The activists say they are often frustrated when their interests and preferences are blocked due to the traditional divide, something which happens often with education.Ī Unesco report published in 2021 found that about 93 per cent of children in Northern Ireland still attend schools that are largely segregated by religion. “And there’ll be parents who have come through with PTSD through the Troubles… then that always has a knock-on effect on how they raised their kids, you know, there’s problems in the household as well.” “We’ve grown up with a lot of social problems in certain areas and a lot of that is coming from growing up in the backgrounds where you can’t go into that community, you can’t talk to them, you can’t be friends with them, you have to go to this school,” he says. ![]() McAdoo, who is employed by Youth Action NI, says young people are suffering from the “inherited trauma” of the past. “Of course I grew up here and heard an awful lot about it, but the Good Friday Agreement… I don’t connect with it at all,” he says. ![]() “We’re not trying to forget it, but we’re trying to acknowledge things are more important.”Ĭonlon was among the speakers at the Peace Summit in Derry last week, hosted by the John and Pat Hume Foundation and Community Dialogue, which highlighted the need for better peace and reconciliation processes.Īnother speaker, Jamie McAdoo (26), from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, was just two when the peace agreement was signed. “We could be sitting and having a discussion and then it feels it’s the older people go ‘but remember sectarianism, don’t forget about sectarianism’,” she says. We’re not trying to forget it, but we’re trying to acknowledge things are more important - Cori Conlonĭespite data from the Northern Ireland Executive Office showing a drop in the number of schools taking part in shared education projects tackling the sectarian divide from 76 per cent in 2013 to 63 per cent in 2018, young people often find that such division is something imposed on them by their elders.Ĭonlon says a Rainbow Factory production, Somewhere Only We Know, partly explored last year “how the young people felt they were being passed an identity from their parents and from their grandparents that they didn’t feel was part of them”.
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