THE IRISH EDUCATION SYSTEM. To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."
Belfast, 31st May, 1864.
Ste,—I did. not see your article of the 21st on the Irish national education question until a week after publieation. I trust you will give insertion to the following statement of the present aspect of that question, from the pen of one who belongs to that minority of the members of the Established aurch of Ireland who support the principles of the Irish national system of education.
You represent the agitation which has been got up in the North of Ireland against the recent proceedings of the National Board of Education as the work of a few Presbyterian leaders, who are desirous of forcing one of their own number into a paid commissionership. To this I reply that I doubt whether the Presbyterian leaders would get up an agitation for such a pur- pose; if they made the attempt, I do not think their people would follow them ; and if the leaders were mean enough, and the people foolish enough so to act, they most certainly could not carry the Liberal Churchmen with them.
The purpose of the present agitation is no less than to protect the Irish national system of education against the Board which is charged with the administration of the system. This will appear as strange as it is a strong assertion, but it can be proved.
The convent schools, as you state, are the objects of attack,— an attack which you think would bejustifiable if their connection with the National Board were a novelty. But are we bound to acquiesce in an abuse because it has lasted for thirty years ? You say the convent schools which at present receive State aid have the same guaranteed to them by a solemn pledge. I am at a loss to know when and where any such pledge has been written, spoken, or implied. But it may be said with perfect truth that the original connection of the convent schools with the Board was brought about in violation of a solemn pledge. The original published rules of the Board were assuredly not meant for its own guidance merely, but were a pledge to Parliament and the nation that the State grant should be distributed in conformity with and on the conditions of those rules; and those rules can- not be fairly interpreted so as to sanction State aid to the con- vent schools. They do not expressly forbid it, any more than the New Testament expressly forbids the levying of a military con- tribution during a suspension of hostilities ; but they forbid the introduction of religious emblems or " badges " (1 quote the word) into any school in connection with the Board ; and it would be difficult to deny that the dresses of nuns are religious badges. They also require that the teachers shall be persons approved by the Board, shall be paid by and removeable by the Board,—conditions which cannot possibly be complied with in the case of convent schools, where the work of teaching is done by the nuns themselves, whose efficiency as individual teachers the Board has no way of testing, who cannot be dismissed for inefficiency, and whose renunciation of private property makes it impossible for them to be paid in the ordinary manner, so that payment is made to the convent as a community, and in propor- tion to the number of children in. attendance at the schools.
Thus not only has the spirit of the system been systematically
violated by granting State assistance to schools which could not, even if the authorities of the convents desired it, be really unsec- tarian ; but the very letter of its rules has been violated by giving assistance to schools in which the Board had no means of enforcing that control which those rules-required, and the spirit and letter have been violated alike in schools where "religious badges" are necessarily the objects that strike every eye.
A new code of rules was published in 1854, which for the first time formally recognized the convent schools, although they had received State assistance for twenty years. A new abuse has
grown up since then. Monastery schools are now receiving State assistance, and, as before, a rule has been made to sanction the abuse after it has taken root. No rule has ever been made to authorize the granting of State assistance to monastery schools, but in the code of rules bearing date 1803 (though not yet issued) the privileges of monastery schools are incidentally mentioned in such a way as to imply their existence and their legality.
But it is not against the mere existence of convent and monastery schools receiving State assistance that the Presby- terians and Liberal Churchmen of the North of Ireland are now in arms. It is against a proposed change which threatens to transform the Irish system from one as liberal as that of Protes- tant Switzerland to one as sectarian as that of Austria under the Concordat—a change, moreover, so small in appearance that it could scarcely attract the notice of any one who was not familiar with the system.
I must explain that the efficiency of the whole system turns on the "model schools." These are large, expensive, and highly efficient schools, situated in the capital and the chief provincial towns of Ireland, which are in everything under the direct management of the National Board. Their purpose is partly to give a first-rate education, suited to the lower and middle class, to as many children as are sent there; and partly to train young men and women as teachers of national schools. For the latter purpose there is an elaborate system of pupil-teachers, like what you have in England, which works most satisfactorily. The model schools are the one portion of the Irish national system of which the practical operation is universally admired, and have never been assailed except on grounds of the narrowest and most clearly avowed sectarianism. This part of the system is what the Board of Education is now endeavouring to destroy. Their new code of rules contains a pledge to extend the privilege of having pupil-teachers paid by the State, which is now limited to the model schools, to " a few large and highly efficient [other] schools." By these convent and monastery schools are meant ; on this point there is no attempt at concealment, and the Board is already re- ducing the number of pupil-teachers in the model schools and the Parliamentary vote for their salaries, while a vote is to be asked in the education estimates of this year for the salaries of pupil-teachers under the new name of "first-class monitors" in other schools. The effect of this change, if it is allowed to go on, will necessarily be that in the next generation nearly all the Roman Catholic teachers of the people of Ireland will have been trained, and will have their minds formed, not as at present in the healthy liberalizing atmosphere of the model schools, but in monasteries and nunneries. Is this an end that Irish Liberals ought to sanction or English Liberals to strive for?
As to the personal question, I cannot agree with you that the character of Mr. Macdonnell, the "paid Commissioner" and the Secretary of the Board, ought to be regarded as a reply to all attacks. I cannot think that any official residing in Dublin and not directly responsible to Parliament should be presumed in- capable of similar °fiances to those for which the House of Com- mons has compelled Mr. Lowe's resignation.
Beyond doubt the constitution of the Board needs a radical change. A large unpaid Board cannot work well ; and the Irish Education Board needs to be reformed for the same reason as the English Ecclesiastical Commission, and in the same way, namely, by getting the work done by a small number of paid and responsible officials. Mr. Macdonnell is at present the only paid Commissioner, and such is the atmosphere of fierce mistrust that surrounds all Irish questions, that it is nearly impossible for any one Irishman in such a position to command the confidence of his fellow-countrymen of all creeds. I believe the best system would be a Board of three paid Commissioners, one of the Established Church; one Presbyterian, and one Roman Catholic. But if there is to be only one, and with large powers, by all means let him be an Englishman.—I am respectfully yours,
SOSEPH Joasr MURPHY.
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