Page 6, 20th April 1945

20th April 1945

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Page 6, 20th April 1945 — Education : Irish Dilemma
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Education : Irish Dilemma

From Our Own Correspondent DUBLIN
Should education be completely a State responsibility?
The Catholic answer is, certainly not. flow are voluntary schools to be kept at a due state of material comfort, with presumably smaller resources 7 Them is a dilemma which Catholic democracy must settle: and the task is taxing Irish states.eansnip.
The National Teachers, through their organisation, have asked repeatedly by resolution that the State should undertake all building and equipment dosts. On other occasions, they have asked for the State to provide all books —so that no responsibility should rest on parents in this matter, and no father have. to go short of a packet of cigarettes that his child should have a catechism.
BISHOP'S FEARS
The Bishop of Galway, addressing this year's congress of the teachers, said bluntly that the clergy viewed the
demand for complete State responsibility with displeasure. They saw in it a threat to the managerial system, which (as everyone knows) has given Ireland the most satisfactory state of Catholic school control of any country in Christendom.
The Irish Press, reporting Dr. Browne's words, interpreted them as a condemnation of the teachers' demands. The spokesman of the teachers, Mr. T. J. O'Connell, sternly protested that the paper was imparting to the teachers an attitude which they did not take.
AN EDUCATION COUNCIL?
A three-cornered dispute thus arose, and it seems to some of us that this is one more proof of the need for an Education Council—a forum bi which policy can be debated better than by long-range counter-criticism and press polemics. For. behind the dispute. these real issues are at stake.
The teaohers arc not actuated by Sinism or Socialism. They arc not anxious for State domination: for, after all, 75 per cent. of them are Catholics. No, but they know how backward is our school fabric. Hundreds of them leach in schools that are unfitted for pse by modern standards: Some lisarishea have been wet, overcrowded, and insanitary schools. with little prospect of improvement unless either the State intervenes or some strong impulse comes from another 'quarter.
Parents who have seen their children stricken by diphtheria in schools so insanitary that the disease has become endemic in the district, or threatened with a lifetime or rheumatism from leaky-roofed classrisoms, are inclined to welcome an appeal to the Sate. These conditions, of course, are not the rule, but they are still common enough to excuse impatience.
On the other hand, it is obvious that every recourse to the State vests new responsibilities in the State, which it cannot lightly surrender. A demand for State action is a surrender of independence. How jealoUs the Church is, and must be, of State monopoly is well known. Let the State take over the entire fabric of the schools, and the choice of teachers, the dictating and complete control of programmes, is likely to ensue. Already eminent Churchmen have complained that the State has too much power in the choice of text books. Secularisation of school Readers has been alleged.
WHENCE THE MONEY?
If, then, we admit that a very drastic reconstruction of schools is needed, while we 'affirm that it ought to be carried out without loss of managerial independence, the hard factor of L. s. d. arises. Where are the Managers to find the mosey to bring all schools to an ideal standard of sanitation, light, air, space? That is the rub. It is not fair to blame a parish priest for not undertaking costly works when already he has spent perhaps a quarter of a century as a curate and then a dozen years as Parm-hus, in struggling to reduce debts on churches. There can be few of our elder clergy tour clerical Managers) who have not built or repaired churches'—work that has exhausted their zeal for money drives and battles with debt.
From three points of view, therefore, the problem of our school accommodation is difficult, and conflicting principles are involved. Many of us return to the argument that a Council of Education. with subordinate local councils in which parents are represented, is needed to reconcile the opposing factors. in the last resort, the parents pay: whether as taxpayers to the State or as contributors to voluntary funds. Yet they have no say in education at all. because neither Church nor State takes them directly into conference.
Let parents be represented : and from representation they will learn responsibility. They will bring their complaints of bad school fabrics, excessive school lessons, and the like, into a forum where they in turn will learn the difficulties of the authorities. Then, instead of grudging demands upon their pockets, they will become advocates of expenditure, wisely laid out. The real danger to education, and to Catholic principles in education, lies in parental apathy: and that apathy can be cured only by giving parents a say and a share in the great task of perfecting
our schools. •




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