Class struggle – An Irishman’s Diary on a short-lived grind school

The current debate about whether some university places should be awarded by lottery rather than on a points basis, as explored in these pages recently by Joe Humphreys (“Should college places be awarded by lottery?”, September 29th) and others, brings into sharp focus another perennial educational debate – about the value of the “grind schools”, as they are sometimes called.

They are now an established, and occasionally controversial, part of the educational landscape – a survey some years ago found that six out of every 10 Leaving Cert students were going to them to enhance their points total, especially for high-profile courses like medicine and law. But it wasn’t always thus.

They have been associated with competitive examinations for decades, of course – a century ago the examinations for civil service entry were their chief focus. But in the early 1960s they barely featured, and the main manifestation of this phenomenon was in the small ads inserted in the evening papers by individual teachers offering one-to-one exam tuition in their homes after the school day ended.

A plan

So it was when, at the beginning of the academic year 1962-63, two recent graduates and law students hatched a plan that would, we were sure, painlessly enhance our very limited income.

I was one – the other was Dermot Bouchier Hayes, a brilliant young lawyer and budding politician who would almost certainly have ended up as a cabinet minister (probably for Fianna Fáil) had he not later died tragically following a mountaineering accident.

The plan was to start a “grind” school of our own. The location chosen was Dermot’s family home, an imposing single-family house at the top of Lower Leeson Street. His father, a noted doctor, had died relatively young, and his consulting rooms at the front of the house were therefore available for our purposes. I lived not far away away, in a decrepit basement flat at No 33 Lower Leeson Street, which at various times housed a long succession of transients, including luminaries such as Patrick Kavanagh, Leland Bardwell, and others of that ilk.

When I lived there, part of the rent was paid by the Literary and Historical Society, the premier UCD debating society of which Dermot was then the auditor. In return for this, the L&H had their weekly party there after the debate every Saturday night, which saved the occupants of No 33 from having to find a party going on anywhere else. Although now a respectable business premises, it later had an even seedier incarnation as “Samantha’s Nightclub”.

We put an ad in the Evening Press, offering our services as the proprietors and staff of an institution we grandiloquently entitled the "National Academy". We included Dermot's home telephone number, and instructed applicants to ring only at times when we were sure that we would be there.

We didn’t have to wait long. Although the phone wasn’t exactly jumping off the hook, there were a few tentative calls, and soon an appointment was made with the first prospective tutee. For reasons which now escape me, I was put into the firing line, and dressed up for the occasion. This involved digging out of a suitcase a suit of my father’s, which he had rarely worn, and which I imagine he had sent back to Dublin with me because he thought it suitable for an up-and-coming young solicitor. It was a double-breasted tweed suit which was so stiff and had been so rarely worn by anyone – and never previously by me – that it could almost stand up on its own without a human occupant.

I welcomed the prospective student and ushered him into the front room, taking up my position behind the imposing consultant’s mahogany desk. After the usual formalities had been observed – name, address, school previously attended, that sort of thing – we got down to business. For which of the subjects listed in our ad, I inquired, would he like tuition?

Suddenly, the boot was on the other foot, as he asked me what books he would be expected to bring to our classes, and I realised that the details of any of the subjects on the Leaving Cert curriculum, which I had studied about four years previously, were now completely unknown to me.

Summoning up all my reserves of mental agility, I told him that we would shortly be in touch with him about this and other matters, and ushered him out of the front door as swiftly, and politely, as I could. Not long afterwards, sitting over a pint supplied by the ever-cheerful Billy in O’Dwyer’s pub at the bottom of Leeson Street, Dermot and I decided that educational entrepreneurship was not exactly our thing. If the phone in Dermot’s front hall ever rang again, we made sure that there was nobody around to answer it.

We were, as things turned out, ahead of our time. Seven years later the irrepressible Ray Kearns, then a maths teacher at Gonzaga, opened the Institute of Education at No 19 Lower Leeson Street, with 10 students. The rest is history.

We may not actually have taught anyone anything, but we learned at least one valuable lesson ourselves. Fail to prepare – prepare to fail.