Christian and De La Salle brothers did their best for pupils of all classes

I REFER to Gregóir de Buitléir’s letter (‘A Mon boy rallies to defence of Christian Brothers’, May 14) in response to Matt Cooper’s column (May 9) about the brothers at the ‘North Mon’ in Cork.

I went to a De La Salle brothers’ secondary school in a working class area of Dublin in the early 1960s. The parents of the pupils were a mixture of middle class, working class and the unemployed. This was before the era of free education, so you had to pay a fee of about £7 a term or £21 a year — not huge even then.

I heard on the grapevine that some boys were excused payment of fees because their parents could not afford it. However, I never heard their names since that information was taboo.

In my time there were 12 or so brothers and three lay teachers. Corporal punishment was taken for granted. It was employed for bad behaviour and for failure at lessons. Even at the time I thought it was justified for the first, but not for the second, so obviously we were not brainwashed.

Two of the three lay teachers were inveterate users of the strap — far more so than the vast majority of the brothers. I developed a theory about that, too. I said the brothers got more respect because they were religious and the lay teachers had to use the strap more to assert their authority.

However, one brother slapped us as much as the lay teachers. He taught us maths and science and was more dedicated than inspiring as a teacher.

Most of his class were doing pass maths in the Leaving Cert, but a minority were doing honours so he had to teach the two courses.

The way he did it was to teach the pass course exclusively during the day and bring the honours students in two evenings a week and on Saturday to teach them. He got no money for this.

This was typical of the brothers’ approach to education. Honours students had to be encouraged, but everybody had to get through.

I was not interested in games, but I believe the brothers were far more involved than lay teachers in training boys for football, hurling, etc. Nowadays it is difficult to find adults to coach young people — partly because they are afraid of bogus allegations of child abuse. Also, many schools will not allow pupils to run in the schoolyard because they might fall and parents might sue the school. This is the new secular ethos that has replaced the traditional Catholicism inculcated by the De La Salle and Christian Brothers. Does Matt Cooper really believe it is an improvement?

Rory Connor

11 Lohunda Grove

Dublin 15