That freedom may be availed of to the noble ends of education there must
be, within the school system and within the school, an adequate
inspiration. The school must make such an appeal to the pupil as shall
resound throughout his after life, urging him always to be his best
self, never his second-best self. Such an inspiration will come most
adequately of all from religion. I do not think that there can be any
education of which spiritual religion does not form an integral part; as
it is the most important part of life, so it should be the most
important part of education, which some have defined as a preparation
for complete life. And inspiration will come also from the hero-stories
of the world, and especially of our own people; from science and art if
taught by people who are really scientists and artists, and not merely
persons with certificates from Mr. T. W. Russell; from literature
enjoyed as literature and not studied as “texts”; from the associations
of the school place; finally and chiefly from the humanity and
great-heartedness of the teacher.
A heroic tale is more essentially a factor in education than a
proposition in Euclid. The story of Joan of Arc or the story of the
young Napoleon means more for boys and girls than all the algebra in all
the books. What the modern world wants more than anything else, what
Ireland wants beyond all other modern countries, is a new birth of the
heroic spirit. If our schools would set themselves that task, the task
of fostering once again knightly courage and strength and truth--that
type of efficiency rather than the peculiar type of efficiency demanded
by the English Civil Service--we should have at least the beginning of
an educational system. And what an appeal an Irish school system might
have! What a rallying cry an Irish Minister of Education might give to
young Ireland! When we were starting St. Enda’s I said to my boys: “We
must re-create and perpetuate in Ireland the knightly tradition of
Cuchulainn, ‘better is short life with honour than long life with
dishonour’; ‘I care not though I were to live but one day and one night,
if only my fame and my deeds live after me’; the noble tradition of the
Fianna, ‘we, the Fianna, never told a lie, falsehood was never imputed
to us’; ‘strength in our hands, truth on our lips, and cleanness in our
hearts’; the Christ-like tradition of Colmcille, ‘if I die it shall be
from the excess of the love I bear the Gael.’” And to that antique
evangel should be added the evangels of later days: the stories of Red
Hugh and Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet and John Mitchel and O’Donovan
Rossa and Eoghan O’Growney. I have seen Irish boys and girls moved
inexpressibly by the story of Emmet or the story of Anne Devlin, and I
have always felt it to be legitimate to make use for educational
purposes of an exaltation so produced.
The value of the national factor in education would appear to rest
chiefly in this, that it addresses itself to the most generous side of
the child’s nature, urging him to live up to his finest self. If the
true work of the teacher be, as I have said, to help the child to
realise himself at his best and worthiest, the factor of nationality is
of prime importance, apart from any ulterior propagandist views the
teacher may cherish. The school system which neglects it commits, even
from the purely pedagogic point of view, a primary blunder. It neglects
one of the most powerful of educational resources.
It is because the English education system in Ireland has deliberately
eliminated the national factor that it has so terrifically succeeded.
For it has succeeded--succeeded in making slaves of us. And it has
succeeded so well that we no longer realise that we are slaves. Some of
us even think our chains ornamental, and are a little doubtful as to
whether we shall be quite as comfortable and quite as respectable when
they are hacked off.
It remains the crowning achievement of the “National” and Intermediate
systems that they have wrought such a change in this people that once
loved freedom so passionately. Three-quarters of a century ago there
still remained in Ireland a stubborn Irish thing which Cromwell had not
trampled out, which the Penal Laws had not crushed, which the horrors of
’98 had not daunted, which Pitt had not purchased: a national
consciousness enshrined mainly in a national language. After
three-quarters of a century’s education that thing is nearly lost.
A new education system in Ireland has to do more than restore a national
culture. It has to restore manhood to a race that has been deprived of
it. Along with its inspiration it must, therefore, bring a certain
hardening. It must lead Ireland back to her sagas.
Finally, I say, inspiration must come from the teacher. If we can no
longer send the children to the heroes and seers and scholars to be
fostered, we can at least bring some of the heroes and seers and
scholars to the schools. We can rise up against the system which
tolerates as teachers the rejected of all other professions rather than
demanding for so priest-like an office the highest souls and noblest
intellects of the race. I remember once going into a schoolroom in
Belgium and finding an old man talking quietly and beautifully about
literature to a silent class of boys; I was told that he was one of the
most distinguished of contemporary Flemish poets. Here was the sort of
personality, the sort of influence, one ought to see in a schoolroom.
Not, indeed, that every poet would make a good schoolmaster, or every
schoolmaster a good poet. But how seldom here has the teacher any
interest in literature at all; how seldom has he any horizon above his
time-table, any soul larger than his results fees!
The fact is that, with rare exceptions, the men and women who are
willing to work under the conditions as to personal dignity, freedom,
tenure, and emolument which obtain in Irish schools are not the sort of
men and women likely to make good educators. This part of the subject
has been so much discussed in public that one need not dwell upon it. We
are all alive to the truth that a teacher ought to be paid better than a
policeman, and to the scandal of the fact that many an able and cultured
man is working in Irish secondary schools at a salary less than that of
the Viceroy’s chauffeur.