The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Volume 1, August 1865
History
The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Volume 1, August 1865
Catholic Church -- Ireland -- Periodicals; Catholic Church -- Periodicals
"I do not stop to argue whether L15,000 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 L3,500. 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
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