National education, Ireland : letter from the Right Hon. Chichester S. Fortescue ... to the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland, on the organisation and government of training and model schools : together with the answer of the Commissioners, and other statements and documents referring thereto.

  • Carlingford, Chichester Samuel Parkinson-Fortescue, Baron, 1823-1898.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: National education, Ireland : letter from the Right Hon. Chichester S. Fortescue ... to the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland, on the organisation and government of training and model schools : together with the answer of the Commissioners, and other statements and documents referring thereto. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    amount of such grant, and also for tlic suggestion of all regula- tions of detail necessary to cari’y into effect the plan which I have desci'ibed. Her Majesty’s Government, in the next place, strongly recom- mend a revision of the arrangements for the reception of the teachers in training in force in the Normal Establishment in Dublin, with the view of providing, if possible, an ampler and more practical course of instruction for a larger number of teachers. They desire, also, to observe that there is a marked distinction between the position of students residing for a con- siderable time as boarders in a Training Institute or Model School and that of day scholars attending an ordinary school—a distinc- tion which accounts for the fact that objections are often enter- tained, especially by the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church, against sending teachers or pupil teachers to an institution where their domestic life is not based, like the family life of a home, upon identity of religious belief. It appears to the Government that the double object of meeting such objections, and of providing the means of retaining a larger number of teachers for a longer period in training, might, to a great extent, be attained by permitting teachers or pupil teachers, at their own desire, or that of the managers of schools by whom they are sent up for training, to board and lodge out of the official establishment. In such cases teachers and pupil teachers should receive an allowance in lieu of board and lodging, and arrange- ments could be readily made for their reception in private boarding- houses sanctioned by the Commissioners. If a precedent were needed for such an arrangement, I find that in the Scotch Presby- terian Training Colleges there are no official residences for the teachers in training, who, by means of an allowance from the Col- lege, provide board and lodging for themselves. The Government are further of opinion that, considering the nature of these institutions, in which the Commissioners stand, to a great extent, towards the teachers in loco parentis, and in which large numbers of children of different religious denominations are drawn together without that local supervision, either lay or clerical, which the patron or manager affords to an ordinary National School, some special provision should be made for the religious instruction and supervision of the inmates, and with this view they recommend the appointment of chaplains in connexion with the Central Training and District Model Schools upon the following conditions :— The Commissioners, upon the recommendation of the bishop or other authority of the Church to which they belong, should appoint as chaplains resident clergymen of each denomination. The chaplain should have control, subject to the rules of the Board, over the religious instruction of the teachers in training and pupils of his own denomination. It would be especially his duty to watch over those teachers who, under the last proposal, shotdd