"'Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself has said
This is my own, my native land,'
and so on, fearing that they might have a bad effect upon Irish children by teaching them to love the land they were born in, and substituted some verses written by one of their own members. One stanza ran something like this:
"'I thank the goodness and the grace
Which on my birth have smiled,
And made me in these Christian days
A happy English child.'
The Board claimed there was nothing sectarian about that stanza, but I wonder what the O'Malleys over in Joyce's Country thought when their children recited it? I'll bet there was a riot! And the histories had every sort of history in them except Irish history. Ireland was treated as a kind of tail to England's kite, and the English conquest was spoken of as a thing for which Ireland should be deeply grateful, and the English government was held up to admiration as the best and wisest that man could hope to devise.
"Ah, well, those days are over now, and they don't try to make a happy English child out of an Irish Catholic any longer. The principal trouble now is that there isn't enough money to carry on the schools properly. Many of the buildings are unfit for schoolhouses, and the teachers are miserably paid. The school-books are usually poor little penny affairs, for the children can't afford more expensive ones. We visit the schools three times a year and look them over, but there isn't anything we can do. Here is the blank we are supposed to fill out."
The blank was a portentous four-page document, with many printed questions. The first section dealt with the condition of the schoolhouse and premises, the second with the school equipment, the third with the organisation, and so on. As might be expected, many of the questions have to do with the subject of religious instruction. Here are some of them:
Note objections (if any) to arrangements for Religious Instruction.
Have you examined the Religious Instruction Certificate Book?
Are the Rules as to this book observed?
Is the school bona fide open to pupils of all denominations?