Crisis Iw the Schools

The educational system in the 26 Cos is in a deepening crisis of crushing proportions. It is a crisis which promises to evoke major struggles by students, teachers, and the working class as a whole. Its roots are many but its solution demands fundamental reorganisation of the system and rethinking of its basic philosophy. The Irish educational system has always been skimpy and distorted -geared originally to the direct needs of the British colonial overlords and latterly to the needs of the neo-colonial set-up of the Free State. One of the over-riding dist— ortions is the ownership and control of so much of the system by the church. The vast majority of primary and secondary schools as well as many third level colleges are completely in church hands. In education, more than in any other single area, the church has played its role as a central pillar of neo-colonial rule in Ireland. As well as determining archaic curricula and maintaining primitive school facilities, clerical control has served to root out or cow down rebel teachers and students.

The church-dominated sector of the system proved so inflexible that in the past decade, when imperialist investment in Ireland required a mre technically trained workforce, the government stepped in to expand the secular vocational portion of the system, especially into the third level.

At the present time, there are superimposed on this chaotic, piecemeal system a number of powerful newer disrupting forces, resulting in the main from the international recession and the ending of the long post-war boom in the imperialist economies. Emigration has largely come to an end, and there is no likelihood of its resurgence in the years ahead. Consequently, there is underway a population explosion, probably surpassing that of the first half of the 19th century. 33% of the population is under 15 years old... Primary schools are beginning to burst at the seams. In place of the tideal’ pupil to teacher ratio of around 20/1, the actual figure is about 39/1. About 69% of all primary pupils are in classes of over 50. And the worst conditions of course prevail in the schools in working class districts. In the post-primary levels there has been a 70% increase in the num ber of students in the last decade. But at these levels the process is only beginning.

Among the consequences of this student population explosion, without a related expansion of facilities and increase in the numbers of teachers, are high pupil absenteeism but especially an appalling rise in functional illiteracy among postprimary students. Estimates suggest that about 30% of vocational school students and up to 10% of secondary school students are backward readers, Serious psychological as well as social and economic impairment of huge numbers of young people is undoubtedly being meted out by this increasingly crisis-ridden system, The government is meanwhile bent on cutting back on educational spending, thus shifting a still heavier burden onto the shoulders of the workers and the poor.

THE UNIONS The prospects for the years ahead include accelerated worsening of the school system, rapid deterioration in the quality of the education received by young people and decline in the working conditions of all teachers. Resistance to this process is an integral part of the fight by workers and their allies against the deepening of their exploitation and oppression by the British imperialist overlords: and their native neo-colonial agents. The defence and improvement of the educational system is a vital strand in the struggle of Irish workers and small farmers for “unfettered control of Irish destinies". It is a strand of the struggle that must involve the broadest layers of the workers' movement — trade unions, tenant committees, étc. — as wel] as the student The teachers have a vital interest in this fight and have a central role to play. Unfortunately they are now disunited. The primary teachers are in INTO (Irish National Teachers Organisation), the vocational teachers are in TUI (Teachers Union of Ireland) and the secondary teachers are (continued on PII)

Under the pressure of the role of Imperialism in Ireland and the tum of events, republicans, including all those of either socialist or purely nationalist orientation, have been forced to adopt positions on social and political questions, This has been an extremely slow process among the vast majority, hindered by militarist conceptions of struggle.

Those most obviously at fault are the Provisionals. The process of radicalisation among women and