Michael likes Thomas

This is possibly the saddest story I've ever heard.

A pal told it to me tonight. He was walking through a leafy affluent South Dublin suburb yesterday, passing a very expensive and prestigious boys school as they were letting out at the end of the school day.

He noticed one lad, slightly taller than another, torturing the second boy. He had him in a grip around his neck and was wrestling him to the ground. Other boys were watching. None of these boys were older than ten, apparently. All small children really.

As he wrestled his prey to the ground, the taller lad was jeering at the one he was persecuting. "Michael likes Thomas! Michael likes Thomas!" The gathered crowd of lads joined in with the chant. Soon, the poor lad on the ground was surrounded by his classmates all chanting 'Michael likes Thomas!"

My pal, passing by, was struck initially at how early homophobia appears to emerge among kids these days. But then he suddenly noticed a third lad, hanging back behind a tree away from the pack. This lad was completely dishevelled, as if he'd been assaulted himself, and was sobbing his heart out as he watched the proceedings.

Suddenly it dawned on my pal that this was Thomas. With a chill running down his spine, he realised it wasn't a case of homophobia at all. He suddenly saw that the bullying at this expensive, prestigious prep school was so appalling that not only was Thomas being bullied, but another boy Michael was being bullied solely on the basis of being friendly to Thomas.

That level of personal targetting is almost too appalling to contemplate. How isolated, how fearful must that young lad Thomas be on a daily basis? But at least, in a good expensive prep school, you'd expect the staff to jump on top of it, wouldn't you? Well, think on.

A teacher emerged from the school and walked straight past the debacle with only an over-the-shoulder comment. As she headed on, the bullying continued uninterrupted.

Is it any wonder that suicides are getting younger and younger?

Bullying is getting more serious in nature too. It's no longer name calling and the odd dig in the head.

Last week in Galway, a young girl was grabbed by a gang of boys, bound with tape, her mouth stuffed with a scarf and was sexually assaulted while others watched, laughed and filmed the assault. The school's response? Three day suspensions for the cowardly little rapist-wannabes involved.

Three days home from school as 'punishment' for aggravated sexual assault on a young, vulnerable girl? Those boys ought to be doing six months in a Borstal right now, not lounging at home watching daytime telly.

It emerged this week that my own nipper has been suffering ongoing bullying at the hands of a gang of teen boys too.

What sort of spineless, weak, cowardly morons gang up on a girl? There's only two possible answers. The first is in response to those who excuse bullying on the grounds that the bullies don't realise the effects of their actions and were only 'having a bit of fun.'

There's a word for people whose idea of fun is to inflict pain on others. That word is 'sadist.' Research demonstrates that male children who express sadistic impulses are those most likely to go on in adult life to commit murder. So if a bully really is 'having a bit of fun', what they urgently require is constant monitoring and long-term counselling if they are to avoid a lifetime behind bars.

For the vast majority of bullies, sadism is not the motivating factor. For these boys, and perhaps the boys in Galway, I believe the motivating factor is their own crippling inadequacies as individuals. As stunted, weak, immature young males, they are driven by their own sense of insecurity to seek security in the comfort of a pack, just like immature male lions and other animals do.

Lacking the self-confidence to be fully rounded individuals, they shore up their sense of inadequacy by hiding in the herd. Without intervention or somehow becoming self-enlightened, these boys will be permanently trapped in their cycle of inadequacy, their lives capped and stunted by their overwhelming need to remain in scenarios where they are not challenged as individuals, where they can hide in a herd.

I've reported the abuse to the school of course, but I'm concerned that they'll respond like the teacher at that Southside prep school, with some cursory warnings that fail to prevent anything.

I don't mean to sound like a doddery old fascist, but this would not have happened in my day. Any boy, never mind a gang of boys, who so much as picked on a girl would themselves have been beaten to within an inch of their lives by their own peers for being so pathetic.

I reserve the right to deal with this my way too. The school has anti-bullying procedures, so they get first go at resolving this.

But if they don't succeed, I intend to get 'North Belfast' on the spotty, sweaty, pathetic little rugger buggers who require to gather in a gang to pick on a lone girl in order to shore up their stunted masculinity.

And by 'North Belfast', I mean I am entirely prepared to hospitalise each and every one of them, and go to prison if necessary.

It's win-win-win as I see it. My child is no longer bullied. These amoeba get to learn that there's always a bigger bully, a lesson that just might set them on the right path in life.

And I'd get a few weeks in Thornton Hall, where I hear the cells are going to be 'apartment-style' with flat-screen TVs. Nice.

Educate the kids together and they won't grow up to shoot each other

Sometimes the best ideas are the simple ones. Like non-denominational integrated schooling in the North.

In the quarter century since Lagan College first opened its doors, thousands of children have had the opportunity to be educated alongside those from the other community, eliminating the likelihood of those children becoming the latest generation of bigots.

In a climate where living arrangements have become dangerously polarised into a patchwork of single community ghettos, school and the workplace have become almost the only environments in which both communities can encounter each other in the province.

This morning, it has emerged that the Catholic Council for Maintained Schools, which oversees the running of Catholic schooling in the North, is set to shut at least 50 primary schools because of plummetting demographics and lack of interest from parents.

And about time too. The old Jesuitical saying 'Give me a boy for seven years and he'll be ours for life' was never more relevant than in relation to Catholic schooling in the North.

In addition to the standard curriculum, far too often children in CCMS schools were educated in non-official subjects, like bigotry, sectarianism, Republican politics and violence.

Of course, the priests and nuns weren't usually to the fore when it came to politics or endorsing violence and paramilitaries. They were probably too busy with their own unofficial curriculum of Catholic guilt and brutalisation.

They tended to leave the overt bigotry teaching to their lay teachers in my experience. One Irish teacher I had used to hold the metre stick out the window when British army helicopters flew overhead, mimicking firing a rocket propelled grenade at it, and telling us 'That's how you do it, boys.'

It came as no surprise to me when it emerged that he was a member of a paramilitary organisation and he later fled to Spain to avoid arrest.

I've no doubt plenty of people went to Catholic schools and had wonderful times with wonderful teachers. I wasn't one of those. But even for those who were, I'd pose the question, did it do you any good not to be educated alongside Protestants?

The CCMS, or Catholic Council for Maintaining Sectarianism as I prefer to expand it, has bitterly opposed integrated schooling, preferring to maintain their own fiefdom over the hearts and minds of impressionable youths.

It's time they were scrapped, and all schools in Northern Ireland made mandatorily integrated and non-denominational. If you want religion taught to your kids, let them go to a Sunday school, and let the CCMS turn their attentions in that direction.

And if you wish to see religious education taught in schools, let the local clerics handle it, like they would elsewhere.

When I switched schools to attend one which had students of at least five different religions attending, they had no problem accommodating everyone in terms of morning prayer and assemblies, or in terms of what version of the religious knowledge exam paper they had to study.

If we ever really hope to see the end of bigotry and sectarianism in Northern Ireland, the best place to start is with the kids. Let's give them a chance to get to know each other before their elders teach them to hate each other.

The best way to do that is to integrate all schools in the province under a non-denominational banner for at least a generation.

And that involves restricting the Catholic Council for Maintaining Sectarian schooling to Sunday, if not scrapping it altogether.