the most public-spirited efforts
to convert the Irish educational system into one organic whole.

(1) Although the mischievous principle of fees by results has
disappeared for ever from the National Schools, it still clings to
Intermediate Education, numbing and constricting, like some remorseless
ivy limb, the growth and free exercise of the central stem and its
branches, and preventing the natural sap from rising and vitalising the
whole. It is not as though the rest of the world had set the seal of its
approval upon this kind of examination. The contrary is the fact. Almost
every country in the world has rejected this system as wholly
pernicious, injurious for the pupil, demoralising for the teacher, and
wasteful for the State. To regard the youth of the Secondary Schools
merely as the geese that lay the golden eggs when the examinations
occur, is to destroy the true aims of education and pervert the
principle of rational development. In fact, payments to Intermediate
Schools ought to depend largely on the results of inspection, and much
less on written examinations, a change which would involve the
appointment of a larger number of inspectors than at present exist. It
is all-important that this alteration should be undertaken without
delay. The mechanical agglomeration of lifeless snippets of information
which characterises the present method is an absurd and antiquated
remnant of the bad old times, and the sooner this part of the system is
hewn down the better it will be for the conscientious discharge of the
teacher's duties and the self-respect of all concerned.

(2) As for any proper official relationship between the Primary and
Secondary systems, it may be said as yet to be practically non-existent.
That co-ordination of the two is essential--nay, vital--if Irish
education is to be placed on a sound footing, may be appreciated from
the fact that a large proportion, or 57 per cent, of the membership of
Intermediate Schools is recruited from the schools of the National
Board. There seem to be only two ways in which this co-ordination can be
satisfactorily effected. Either the pupils must transfer from the
National to the Secondary Schools at an age when they will be young
enough to profit by Secondary instruction, or some sort of higher
instruction must be given in the National Schools so as to fit the
children, when they leave the latter at rather a later age, for the
curriculum awaiting them in the Secondary