Education is probably the most sorrowfully dull of all dull subjects. It
is difficult to repress a yawn when the word is mentioned. Yet we owe
everything to it that we value most. Through it we become emancipated
citizens of the world. Through it we are able to appreciate what is
beautiful and what is ugly, what is right and what is wrong, what is
permanent and what is merely transitory. If the people of a country can
make it their boast that they are truly educated, they need boast of
little else, for all the rest will have been added unto them.
It will be found next to impossible to draw any argument for Home Rule
from the history of Irish Education during the last decade. Indeed, if a
Nationalist Parliament were now to be established in College Green, it
is more than probable that the progress made by educational reformers
since 1900 would be largely thrown away, and the prospects of still
further improvement endangered and perhaps destroyed.
What has been done in the domain of Irish Education, and what still
remains to be done? Leaving out of account the problem of the
Universities, which, so far as can be seen, has at any rate been
temporarily solved--and solved, let it be marked, under the Legislative
Union, with the participation and consent of the Nationalist
party--there are two broad branches of the educational tree which every
year are growing in volume and putting forth finer leaves and fruit.
Primary and Secondary Education, by far the most important parts of the
Irish Educational system, if only allowed to continue their development,
tended with care by those who have the interests of the younger
generation at heart and left unmolested by the poisonous creepers of
political prejudice, will be found to do more for the increase of Irish
prosperity and the establishment of national and religious concord than
any device for legislative separation that the wit of man can frame. Not
that educational reform is not sorely needed. Far from it. There are few
aspects of Irish life where reform is more urgently required. But let it
be reform, as far as possible, along existing lines of progress, and in
full recognition of religious susceptibilities and of certain stubborn
facts which may be deplored, but which it would be unwise to ignore. Let
it be reform undertaken and pursued on the advice of those who
understand this question and are in sympathy with its peculiar
difficulties, and let not the Treasury turn a deaf ear to the demands of
reason, when a few extra thousand pounds might make all the difference
between failure and success. Above all, let it be reform unembittered by
the strife of creeds warring for supremacy in an Irish House of Commons.
Let it reap the advantages of a continuous policy undisturbed by the
rise and fall of local Ministries and the lobbying and log-rolling of
sects and factions. Treat it, as it is being treated to-day, in a calm
spirit of inquiry and recommendation, and the richest blessing of the
Legislative Union will be an Ireland at peace within herself, honoured
for her learning, distinguished by her refinement, and intellectually
the equal of any nation upon earth.