the report on Manual
Instruction or on Intermediate Education, which was not known and
applied at least half a century ago in continental countries. In fact,
in the Recess Committee investigations, as any reader of the report of
that body can see for himself, the Committee, guided by foreign
experience, foreshadowed practically every reform now being put into
operation. It is better, of course, that we should reform late than
never, but it is well to bear in mind also, so far as the problems of
this book are concerned, how far the education of the country has fallen
short of any sound standard, and how little could have been expected
from the working of our system. The curve of Irish illiteracy has indeed
fallen continuously with each succeeding census, but true education as
opposed to mere instruction has languished sadly.

Together with my friends and fellow-workers in the self-help movement, I
believe that the problem of Irish education, like all other Irish
problems, must be reconsidered from the standpoint of its relation to
the practical affairs and everyday life of the people of Ireland. The
needs and opportunities of the industrial struggle must, in fact, mould
into shape our educational policy and programmes. We are convinced that
there is little hope of any real solution of the more general problem of
national education, unless and until those in direct contact with the
specific industries of the country succeed in bringing to the notice of
those engaged in the framing of our educational system the kind and
degree of the defects in the industrial character of our people which
debar them from successful competition with other countries. Education
in Ireland has been too long a thing apart from the economic realities
of the country--with what result we know. In the work of the Department
of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, an attempt is
being made to establish a vital relation between industrial education
and industrial life. It is desired to try, at this critical stage of our
development, the experiment--I call it an experiment only because it
does not seem to have been tried before in Ireland--of directing our
instruction with a conscious and careful regard to the probable future
careers of those we are educating.

This attempt touches, of course, only one department of the whole
educational problem, much of which it would be quite outside my present
purpose to discuss. But I must guard agai