The People

Abstract

The real issues in Irish education are, in the words of Sean O'Connor (Assistant Secretary to the Department of Education): ‘Equality of educational opportunity for all and the fashioning of education so that it is responsive to the, aptitudes of the individual pupil’. Perfectly standard aims, shared in theory at least even by the Black Paper brigade. The problem in Ireland is to find any significant level on which they are being discussed. Two major factors continually militate against it. The first is the power struggle between the State and the various participant religious bodies, in which all sides busily avoid confrontation. The State because it lacks the power to make its aims effective through a rationalization of the largely privately run sectors, and cannot therefore afford a political clash with those who control them, the controlling forces because they cannot fully accept ideas that imply a reorganization which would diminish, probably eliminate, their power.

Citation

Barlow, P. (1969), "The People", Education + Training, Vol. 11 No. 11, pp. 448-452. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb016222