Government gets the dunce’s cap for broken promises on education

THERE is a story doing the rounds about Alexander Tyler, a history professor at the University of Edinburgh in the 1780s who assessed the collapse of the Athenian Republic.

“Democracy is always temporary in name,” he concluded. “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasure,” he argued. “From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by dictatorship.”

Check out Tyler — the 18th century history professor at the University of Edinburgh — on the internet and you will get more than 188,000 hits. His theory has certainly gained enormous credibility, but the story is really one of those great urban legends. There was an Alexander Fraser Tyler at the University of Edinburgh at the time, but he did not write about the Athenian Republic.

This urban myth has obviously gained credence because it is so logical, especially when one remembers the damage done to our economy as a result of the reckless promises of 1977, the low standards in high places and the false promises about class sizes that INTO highlighted this week.

Before the 2002 election campaign the Government promised to cut class sizes — in the case of nine-year-olds to below 20 pupils.

By the end of 2007 the average class size was still 27, so in the new programme for government drawn up last summer, they promised to cut class size by one point a year over the next three years in order to reduce the average to 24 pupils by 2010. But before the year was out, they had abandoned that plan, too.

No provision was made in the budget last December for cutting class sizes. Eamon de Valera must be turning in his grave. “Fool me once, shame on you,” he used to say. “Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Fianna Fáil seems to have forgotten its old values. In deceiving people again on the same issue, it is treating them as fools.

Education was a Cinderella department for a long time. In 1922, Michael Collins and de Valera agreed an election pact to form a coalition government on the basis of their existing strength within the Dáil. It was patently undemocratic because they were essentially agreeing to preserve a status quo and ignore the outcome of the actual vote. The British were incensed, but Kevin O’Higgins explained the pact was necessary to ensure an election so the people could have a say on the 1921 treaty.

“Does it matter if de Valera is in charge of education?” O’Higgins asked the British. It seemed nobody cared about education.

Jack Lynch first made his name in government as Minister for Education from 1957-’59. After almost two months in office he admitted he still had no plans.

“Personally,” he told the Dáil, “I think I would have a cheek to come in here after one month in the department and try to promulgate a policy that should be followed.”

One of Lynch’s first acts as minister was to implement a 10% reduction in the capital grants paid to secondary schools and a 6% cut in the money for vocational education.

“I had no part in drawing up the estimate,” he said, as he praised his predecessor, Richard Mulcahy, for having had the political courage to take such a difficult decision. The cuts were restored in the estimates the following year. And, like, a true politician, Lynch took full credit for that.

At the time one of the biggest problems facing education was the shortage of qualified teachers. At the rate new teachers were being produced and others were retiring, it would take 90 years to fulfil the existing requirement, and that was with the class sizes of the time.

The solution was obvious, but Lynch dithered for a year before solving the problem with a stroke of his pen — by abolishing the requirement forcing women teachers to retire once they got married.

That was no election promise — he just announced it. But there was a bit of fancy footwork in the background. The delay was to give him a chance to consult with the real Taoiseach — John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin.

“I cannot say what opposition there was among members of the hierarchy, indeed if any, but I know that in Archbishop McQuaid I had a powerful ally in effecting this very necessary reform,” Lynch later explained. The Department of Education had furnished McQuaid with a memorandum explaining the changes in relation to women teachers.

The archbishop approved it and none of the other bishops raised any objections when the hierarchy met in Maynooth that June, so Lynch knew the road was clear for him to implement the initiative.

The most famous educational innovation of the 20th century was a bold initiative that came right out of the blue — Donogh O’Malley’s announcement on September 10, 1966 of his intention to bring in free secondary education. He made no promises. He just announced his decision without even telling — much less consulting — Finance Minister Jack Lynch.

Lynch and TK Whitaker, secretary of Department of Finance, were incensed. Whitaker’s plan for economic development is widely credited with modernising our economy, but he was looking more towards enhanced vocational education.

WHITAKER did not think the country was ready for free secondary education at the time. “O’Malley’s trump card was the flood of mail that arrived each morning in the Department of Education,” according to PJ Browne in his new biography of Donogh O’Malley. “No vested interest or group, whoever they may be, at whatever level, will sabotage what every reasonably minded man considers to be a just scheme,” O’Malley boldly declared at the time.

The scheme’s critics included not only Lynch and Whitaker, but also Archbishop McQuaid. They were a formidable trio for any politician to take on. They wanted reform, but O’Malley was going too fast, and he made them look like dummies mouthing the harlot’s prayer — “Oh God, make me pure, but not yet!”

Donogh O’Malley reign of Minister for Education was a short one due to his untimely death 40 years ago this month. Browne’s biography — Unfulfilled Promise: Memories of Donogh O’Malley — is a welcome reminder of an accomplished politician whose promise was his performance. Within seven years of the introduction of free secondary education, the percentage of people attending secondary school jumped by 25%. This was to lay the foundation for the Celtic Tiger economy.

In March 1967, O’Malley advocated the amalgamation of UCD and TCD. When he was asked what Archbishop McQuaid thought of the suggestion, he replied that he hadn’t asked him.

Why should he? McQuaid wasn’t the real Taoiseach any longer, thanks in no small measure to people like Donogh O’Malley, who was a real republican.

If PJ Browne decides to write a book about one of the present government, he could call it Empty Promises.