There are few better role models for young people than Queen's Park Rangers midfielder Joey Barton. Student teachers in this part of the world would do better to look to the QPR captain for example rather than to those who believe it the prime function of education to perpetuate the division which scars our society.

Admittedly, not everything Joey does is admirable. He shouldn't have shoved Alex Bruce or taken a dig at Tom Huddlestone in the game against Hull last weekend, and he does have previous.

But Joey is a serious-minded man, with intelligent opinions on important matters, always worth listening to on, for example, religion. Asked what his first priority would be if he were Prime Minister, his answer was: "Privatise religion."

"All public money will be withdrawn from religion. Taxpayers' money will cease to sponsor religion in any and every form. I would dis-establish the Church of England. C of E bishops will lose their right to hold unelected positions in our House of Lords ... all taxpayer funding for faith-based State schools will also cease. If parents want to teach their children in their own homes, then they are free to do so... it is not the State's business to subsidise the training of a child for one religion... the ghettoisation of religious teaching in State schools and the ghettoisation of religious communities which one-sided and narrow religious teaching promotes will end."

I'm aware of no one who took the issue head-on in such a clear and thoughtful manner during the recent controversy over Stephen Farry's plans for Catholic and Protestant teachers to be trained in the same building. Instead, we had accusations from Pat Ramsey of the SDLP that an "Alliance minister (is) attacking a Catholic school for ideological reasons". In this context "ideological" is a synonym for "sectarian" - a jagged allegation for which Ramsey felt no need to produce any evidence.

He then expanded: Farry was attacking "all Catholic schools". No, he wasn't. But if you can be certain that none of your rivals will call you out, why not throw a fistful of mud and then watch to see how much of it sticks? If anybody else gives you grief, just claim that they are putting the entire blame for sectarianism on Catholic schools.

None of this is new. The last time unified teacher training was mooted - in the Chilver Report in the 1980s - the idea was speedily buried in threat and bile. It proposed a Belfast Centre for Teacher Training, to include a Catholic college, Stranmillis College and Queen's School of Education under separate governance, but on the same site. The Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor warned a NIO minister that if the administration dared press ahead with the proposal the anger of the Catholic people would be such that the Church might be unable to restrain them from throwing their full weight behind extreme elements out to destroy the State. The message, delivered during the hunger strike, was received and understood.

The other half of the problem is Protestant unionism. When a non-confessional education system was proposed around the time of the State's foundation, Lord Craigavon warned: "The door (would be) thrown open for a Bolshevist, or an atheist, or a Roman Catholic to become a teacher in a Protestant school."

Introducing a new Education Act in 1930, Craigavon calmed the supposedly jangled nerves of Protestants: "... in no circumstances will Protestant children ever be in any way interfered with by Roman Catholics."

Of course, the divide in education is only one factor in sustaining sectarianism.

Joey is due a few weeks off after last week's powder-puff brawl in Hull's KC Stadium.

He should be invited here to talk some sense to politicians and to our young people, whose future is being infected by poisonous ideas from the past.

We should make use of such decent role models when they come along.

Belfast Telegraph