Christian Brothers will get full marks in history test

IT was with mixed feelings that I read recent reports about the Christian Brothers handing over their schools to a new trust.

Mixed because, on the one hand, the Christian Brothers have got a pretty horrendous press in recent years owing to highly publicised stories and allegations of institutional abuse.

I have read Peter Tyrell’s harrowing account of his days in Letterfrack, entitled Founded on Fear.

His ordeal bears comparison with life in a gulag or a concentration camp and indeed he says he found his stint in a German POW camp in the Second World War easier to bear than life at Letterfrack.

The film Song for a Raggy Boy depicted some of the terrifying and ininhumane treatment meted out by some brothers in the industrial school system.

Over the years, brothers have been accused — some rightly and others falsely — of abusing their authority as teachers and bringing the ideals of their founder, Edmund Rice, into disrepute.

But then there is another side to the story of the Christian Brothers, as there is always to every story.

Among the brothers who appeared in a photo that accompanied one newspaper article on the schools handover were at least two I had known. They taught me at the CBS here in Callan, Co Kilkenny, a town that happens to be the birthplace of Edmund Rice.

One taught me English in first year secondary, and the other art in Leaving Cert. To say that both of them were competent teachers would be a most begrudging understatement.

They were, in my recollection, infinitely superior to the lay teachers by virtue of their innovative and enthusiastic approach to their profession. No pupil was neglected and these men went out of their way to help every pupil overcome learning difficulties or obstacles.

They brought their subjects to life and the classroom buzzed with their charismatic presence from the moment either of them set foot in it.

True, many teachers in primary and secondary schools used corporal punishment up to the day it was banned in 1984. But I can honestly say the Christian Brothers I remember resorted to it a great deal less than their lay colleagues.

Being a native of Callan I will be dismissed as biased on this theme, but I believe that when a thoroughly researched, objective history of the Christian Brothers in Ireland is written, it will vindicate their enormous contribution not just in the field of education, but to laying the foundations for the Celtic Tiger economy.

They started with hedge schools, giving the poorest of our people the advantage in life that only a sound education can provide. Through dark days of poverty, mass emigration and recession, they kept alight the flame of knowledge.

The brothers were educators with attitude. They cared about the progress of pupils. The internationally-renowned artist Tony O’Malley was, like Edmund Rice, born in Callan. While acknowledging that the brothers could be “tough,” O’Malley was adamant they were also “fair” and that, as a nation, we owed them a huge debt of gratitude. I agree with him and I hope the remaining brothers will find solace in the achievements of their order… despite the saturation media focus on the failings of a small and unrepresentative minority.

John Fitzgerald

Lr Coyne Street

Callan

Co Kilkenny