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Show SCHOOLS OF IRELAND I NEED OF REVENUE' Liquor Trade Does Not Furnish Sufficient in Tases for Their Support. TEACHERS IN WORKHOUSES Pedagogues So Poor They Live on Public Bounty or Eke Out Lives on Miserly Pensions. Special Cable to The Tribune. DU3LIN. May 6. Preeminent in the errors Englishmen have made of govern-In govern-In z Ireland is the muddle they have made of education. It Is not so deep a grievance griev-ance as religious persecution, nor so cruel as landlordism, but where these evils are wol! nigh ended, or at least palliated, Irish education is as deep In the slough of despond as ever before. One could not attend the National Conference Con-ference oi Irish Teachers In this city without feeling that the speaker was right who said that for Irish education. England had "not only no money, but no consideration." A grievance Irishmen cannot get over is that the standard of national Intelligence should depend on whisky money. On the .front wall o: the Ancient Concert hall there flared forth before the delegates these fcignlficant phrasings of tneir demands: "Ireland drunk Is Ireland educated; Ireland sober is Ireland illiterate." The point at issue, however, is not the moral one of whether or not the children should be sent to school on the proceeds from the whisky traffic, but the economic issue that arises because these taxes are not enough. Liquor Trade Overtaxed. Th liquor trade In Ireland has reached the maximum of taxation: when it waa earmarked for educational purposes years ago no one ever dreamed that thrse "tithes" of evil which were collected from it would at length be exhausted. But beginning be-ginning with 1S00. liquor taxes, heightened height-ened as they were, have yielded less and less each year, through the sheer discouragement dis-couragement of consumption the increased price thus entailed. So the folly of making the vital concern con-cern of education dependent on such a fluctuating source has been vividly revealed. re-vealed. In 10(H) the amount of money available for Irish education was iJ55. 0v. In 159 it had sunk to less than $150,000. In the meantime the school population had slightly' Increased m tne higher grade scnools. known as the Intermediates. Intermedi-ates. It had gone up 3 per cent. Besides, educational methods have become vastly more thorough and complex in the Intervening In-tervening ten years as improved facilities of all sorts have been adopted In schools all over the world. Thus, for funds at any rate, Ir1?h education edu-cation Is In an absolutelv intolerable state. Scotland, with practically the same population as Ireland, draws benefits from the imperial treasury amounting to almost al-most half as much again as pas through the niggardly hands of Dublin Castle. Ten years ago $50,000 was available for prizes, and 700 recipients were provided pro-vided for; now S35.000 has to suffice and only chances are left to ambitious young Ireland. And there are today quite twice as many candidates for distinctions distinc-tions as In the generous days of a decade ago. Teachers in Workhouses. A particularly scandalous feature of the business was further brought out In this conference hi the miserly pension provisions provi-sions for superannuated teachers. There are at present 111 teachers In the workhouses work-houses of Ireland, and many more too proud to accept relief, but living on pensions pen-sions less than the scanty old age allowance allow-ance Itself. When told of these facts. Chancellor Lloyd-George Is said to have been affected to tears. But no one has yet been affected to action. But, after all. it Is onlv the regulating regulat-ing hand that Is needed., The spirit and the quickening impulse are revealed in the success of the National Universltv, whose constituent colleges at Dublin, Cork. Galway. and Belfast have all grown rapldy In the past two yeara. The movement for technical and agricultural agri-cultural instruction, started only some five years ago. was the subject only the other day of a very heartening official report. The way the farmers' boys attend the ricKety little buildings that are used, staying far into the night to clear up Knotty points, the long tramps pupils are willing to take to get to them, and the prohibitive weather they will breast, are a constant source of marvel to the instructors in-structors and supervisors. Girls technical techni-cal schools, as well, have been spreading under the leadership of the United Irishwomen, Irish-women, and the domestic Instruction thus available threatens to tighten up the servant problem in America by keeping Irish girls at home. |
