The maps, drawing, and musical instruments, museums and scientific apparatus, which should be in every school, are mostly wanting altogether. The books, also, are defective.
The information has the worst fault of the French system: it is too exclusively on physical science and natural history. Fancy a National School which teaches the children no more of the state and history of Ireland than of Belgium or Japan! We have spoken to pupils, nay, to masters of the National Schools, who were ignorant of the physical character of every part of Ireland except their native villages—who knew not how the people lived, or died, or sported, or fought—who had never heard of Tara, Clontarf, Limerick, or Dungannon—to whom the O'Neills and Sarsfields, the Swifts and Sternes, the Grattans and Barrys, our generals, statesmen, authors, orators, and artists, were alike and utterly unknown! Even the hedge schools kept up something of the romance, history, and music of the country.
Until the National Schools fall under national control, the people must take diligent care to procure books on the history, men, language, music, and manners of Ireland for their children. These schools are very good so far as they go, and the children should be sent to them; but they are not national, they do not use the Irish language, nor teach anything peculiarly Irish.
As to solitary study, lists of books, pictures, and maps can alone be given; and to do this usefully would exceed our space at present.
As it is, we find that we have no more room and have not said a word on what we proposed to write—namely, Self-Education through the Temperance Societies.
We do not regret having wandered from our professed subject, as, if treated exclusively, it might lead men into errors which no afterthought could cure.
What we chiefly desire is to set the people on making out plans for their own and their children's education. Thinking cannot be done by deputy—they must think for themselves.
THE HISTORY OF IRELAND.
Something has been done to rescue Ireland from the reproach that she was a wailing and ignorant slave.