"The whole of this immense sum, amounting to nearly one-third of the grant, is really spent upon a machinery for bringing the education of the people under the entire and absolute control of the Board.
"I do not stop to argue whether £15,000 be not an extravagant expenditure for official expenses. That which is of importance to observe is, that the tendency and effect of the costly, but most effective, system of inspection is, in reality, to convert inspection into superintendence, and to extend the direct influence of the Board over all the schools in connection with them. The training or normal establishment is instituted for the express purpose of indoctrinating the masters in the views prescribed by the Board. But the influence does not end here. By a system of examinations, conducted in connection with the inspection, the Board contrives to direct the studies and mould the train of thought of the masters. Their salaries are increased at the pleasure of the Board. A graduated system of promotion and a scale of rewards are established, dependent entirely on their recommending themselves to the inspectors. Under such a system the power nominally left to the local patrons of selecting the schoolmaster, in reality does not give to these patrons any substantial control. Every national schoolmaster adopts, or professes to adopt, the opinions of his real masters, and learns to reflect the opinions which he knows to be in favour with the Board.
"The model schools are established partly to complete the training of the masters, and partly to force upon the country the entire system of the Board. Of these schools the commissioners themselves are the patrons, and in these they have full power of enforcing their own views. What they 'earnestly recommend' to others, they are able to adopt in their own schools. Money is lavished upon these model schools, so as to make them establishments of a superior order. The model school in Marlborough Street is maintained at an expense of £3,500. One in Belfast costs very nearly the same sum. Most of this money is expended in the salaries and maintenance of pupil teachers, so that these model schools are, in effect, colleges, with their exhibitions to attract students. Over these model schools the commissioners have absolute control, and through them, and by means of them, they exercise an almost absolute influence over the whole system of education in connection with the Board. This is, in effect, the carrying out of the plan indicated in the report of 1835. Centralization is secured by an array of schoolmasters, trained under the Commissioners. No man can attain the rank of a first-class national schoolmaster who has not gone through a training in an establishment conducted after the most approved fashion of the Board—a training by which he becomes thoroughly indoctrinated in all the maxims of that fashion. He is not sent to a model school merely to see the best mode of arranging classes or maintaining the discipline of the school. He is sent there to reside as the student of a college, to learn various departments of knowledge. He is taught, in his training, history, political economy, mental philosophy, and scriptural history—and he learns them all in lesson books prepared to order for the Commissioners, and by catechetical instruction, in which he is drilled by professors and inspectors appointed at their sole nomination.
"I pass, for the present, from this part of the subject, with this one observation—that this sum of £80,000 is annually expended upon a portion of the system with which local exertion or local influence has nothing whatever to do. It is wholly, absolutely, and unreservedly under the direction and control of the central authority.
"In England, I may observe, the state assumes no such power. The training institutions for schoolmasters are left entirely under the control of the authorities of the respective denominations. In Ireland, the rule is that the masters should be trained by government, and accept at once their theology, their morals, and their science of teaching at the hands of the officials of the state. It is only the resolute opposition of the Catholic prelates that has prevented this project from being completely carried into effect"—(p. 87-96.)
We regret that our space will not allow us to give more copious extracts from the book now before us. But again we recommend our readers to read and study the whole treatise. It will open their eyes to the dangers with which mixed education, falsely called national, menaces our Church and our country.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Mr. Butt's work is entitled The Liberty of Teaching Vindicated, Reflections and Proposals on the subject of National Education. Dublin. Kelly, Grafton Street, 1865.