Never mind your Free Derry Corner, your rent and rates strike and your no-go areas - today's column comes from the north's first academic selection-free zone in south Down and south Armagh.
Because of the coronavirus, Catholic grammar schools in Newry and Kilkeel have abandoned academic selection for this year.
With the rest of the north (except Craigavon) in selection lockdown, the children of my area were liberated from a system which aims to determine their life chances at the age of 11. Welcome to educational bandit country.
So why did it happen, what difference will it make and might it herald a new beginning for education here? (And education here certainly needs a new beginning).
It all began when Archbishop Eamon Martin called for academic selection to be suspended because of the pandemic. Four Newry schools in his Dromore diocese agreed, plus one in Kilkeel, which is in Down and Connor.
(Why only Kilkeel in Down and Connor? Maybe geographical proximity to Newry outweighed ecclesiastical authority from Belfast and Kilkeel re-enacted the Great Schism of 1054, which divided the Catholic Church from the Eastern Orthodox.)
Education Minister Peter Weir opposes abandoning selection, because there is "no viable alternative to put in its place". That's a bit like saying we cannot cure cancer until we have something to put in its place. The five schools will simply use their own entrance criteria.
(Declaring an interest: I spent 40 years in education as teacher, manager or governor at every level from nursery to university. I believe that academic selection is no more than an irrelevant, intellectual egg and spoon race, which runs counter to the spirit and purpose of education.)
I spent those years arguing against academic selection (which, you politely suggest, indicates that I am not much good at arguing) and this development is the first hint of progress. If some grammar schools can use their own entrance criteria this year, why can't every grammar school do it every year?
Maybe the five schools should follow the ethos of the Bruree (Co Limerick) bakery soviet in 1921. Its banner read, "We make bread, not profits". The schools' banner might proclaim, "We prioritise education over social engineering."
Academic selection is meant to select those suitable for university. But the purpose of universities is unclear, often valuing research over teaching. To counter this, the south has 14 Institutes of Technology (soon to become technological universities) offering high quality learning. The north has no equivalent.
Instead, Stormont placed universities in the economy department. Our political parties know little about the economy and less about education. We need to re-shape our entire learning system.
So after 73 years of academic selection, are we an educated society? (Look at our politics.) Are we a learned society? (Look at the thirty per cent of our children who leave school with basically no qualifications.) A fairer society? (Look at the 120,000 children here in poverty.)
The DUP supports academic selection. Having failed to abolish it (while making it another sectarian issue) Sinn Féin's leadership is silent. Instead, Mary Lou regales us about how she might have joined the IRA had she lived in the north. (I could have sworn the IRA was an all-Ireland organisation.)
(Personal confession: had I been alive in 1014, "there is every possibility" that I would have joined Brian Boru in the Battle of Clontarf, shouting "Danes Out!")
When Peter Weir begins the equivalent of the 1972 Operation Motorman (when the army invaded the no go areas) which side will SF be on? Was academic selection just another populist tactic (and, speaking of populism, whatever happened to an Irish Language Act)?
Meanwhile the five innovative schools should remember that the Bruree soviet collapsed when Sinn Féin's heroine (and later Fianna Fáil founder member) Countess Markievicz, threatened it with the IRA.
For most of the past century the IRA has been fighting for Ireland and ignoring its people. Will those who might have joined it pursue that tradition at Stormont?
