of some facts of the present
educational situation, and I shall indicate, for those readers who are
not familiar with current events in Ireland, the significant evolution,
or revolution, through which Irish education is passing. Within the last
eight years we have had in Ireland three very remarkable reports--in
themselves symptoms of a widespread unrest and dissatisfaction--on the
educational systems of the country. I allude to the reports of two
Viceregal Commissions, one on Manual and Practical Instruction in our
Primary Schools, and the other on our Intermediate Education; and to the
recent report by a Royal Commission on University Education. These
reports cover the three grades of our educational system, and each of
them contains a strong denunciation and a scathing criticism of the
existing provision and methods of instruction in elementary, secondary,
and university education (outside Dublin University), respectively. One
and all showed that the education to be had in our primary and secondary
schools, as well as in the examining body known as the Royal University,
had little regard to the industrial or economic conditions of the
country. We find, for example, agriculture taught out of a text book in
the primary schools, with the result that the _gamins_ of the Belfast
streets secured the highest marks in the subject. In the Intermediate
system are to be found anomalies of a similar kind, which could not long
have survived if there had been a living opinion on educational matters
in Ireland. No careful reader of the evidence given before the
Commissions can fail to see that under our educational system the
schools were practically bribed to fall in with a stereotyped course of
studies which left scant room for elasticity and adaptation to local
needs; that the teacher was, to all intents and purposes, deprived of
healthy initiative; and that the Irish parents must as a body have been
in the dark as to the bearing of their children's studies on their
probable careers in life. A deep and wholesome impression was made in
Ireland by the exposure of the intrinsic evils of a system calculated in
my opinion to turn our youth into a generation of second-rate clerks,
with a distinct distaste for any industrial or productive occupation in
which such qualities as initiative, self-reliance, or judgment were
called for.

I am told by competent authorities that there is not a single
educational principle laid down in either