Christian Brothers’ achievements will pass the history test

THE same week the Christian Brothers ended two centuries of involvement in primary and secondary education, there was also the bizarre barring of three boys from an exam hall for having their hair cut too short.

The brothers have endured a storm of criticism for the actions of a tiny minority in their midst but, overall, they played a blinder in raising this country out of ignorance, poverty and indeed in helping cast off the yoke of foreign oppression.

People like Labour TD Emmet Stagg may call them “savage” and spit on their legacy, but when viewed through the prism of historical objectivity, their achievements will stand. Even Mr Stagg admits his experience of them had one positive (from his point of view) consequence: it encouraged him to become the committed socialist he is today. Sometimes, being taught by the brothers might have seemed like an ordeal, but this educational bootcamp experience turned out countless fine past pupils who went on to achieve great things in a wide range of professions and careers.

I remember one pupil at the secondary school I attended receiving a dozen slaps on each hand for looking out the classroom window at a tomcat making overtures to a feline of the opposite sex.

Other pupils quickly got the message and refrained from viewing this distraction, instead focusing on their studies.

Twenty-three years later, that pupil howled with laughter when I reminded him of the punishment he had received.

He said it did wonders for his powers of concentration. He saw the funny side of the brother intoning a word out loud to coincide with each slap administered: “Don’t ... you ... ever ... look ... at ... that ... cat ... again”.

The past pupil in question also shook the hand of the brother after leaving school and doing well for himself. The order’s founder, Edmund Rice, was born in Callan, Co Kilkenny (my own hometown, I’m delighted to add).

Another great Callan man, artist Tony O’Malley, summed up his feelings about the Christian Brothers thus: “I always stand up for them. They were tough but fair. They taught the poor when no one else bothered.”

It might not be going too far also to credit them with laying the foundations for today’s Celtic Tiger affluence and sense of national pride even if, lamentably, their core values of moral rectitude and spiritual devotion to good works has, to a frightening extent, fallen by the wayside.

Whatever their educational shortcomings, they would never have prevented boys from doing an exam for having short hair. Long hair was frowned upon at various times in many schools because it could be untidy and also contain colonies of lice that bred and spread to other pupils.

Even then, the shaggiest head of long hair never, to my knowledge, resulted in a pupil being kept out of exam class.

But short hair? Never a word of reprimand from the brothers for that. Praise was more likely because it was deemed clean, tidy and respectable, as indeed it would have been in the ranks of the gardaí or defence forces.

The Christian Brothers got you through the snares and pitfalls of learning even if a few got carried away and applied the advice of that good old country and western song: “Drop-kick me, Jesus, through the goal posts of life.”

John Fitzgerald

Lr Coyne Street

Callan

Co Kilkenny