"If due attention be paid to the physical training of the children, and strict discipline be maintained in all their movements in school, they will speedily acquire habits of silence, order, obedience and diligence."

This extract from the first Christian Brothers handbook of 1845 sums up a certain culture with which thousands of Irish people are familiar. While such ideas go back to the middle of the last century, many still see the order as embodying such thinking.

Despite producing some of the most successful people in Irish society, the order has found it hard to shake off the stock image of the Christian Brother as a brutal figure in a dark soutane, bent on inflicting sadistic punishments on his vulnerable young charges.

The 1845 guidebook even described the exact specifications of the leather strap to be used in a Christian Brother's classroom - 13 inches long and one and a quarter-inch wide.

In a subsequent section of the manual, the headmasters are told: "Any demonstration of too great kindness, or too tender an affection for the scholars, would be injurious to them."

While the manual has rightly been pensioned off to the Christian Brothers library in Dublin's North Richmond Street, it has proved far harder to relegate the imagery of the old Christian Brothers tradition to a museum or library.

While past pupils of their schools will carry their own images, the litany of scandals over the last few years have produced even grimmer images, including brothers being led from courthouses in handcuffs.

To quote the order's own words (issued as part of a public apology in May 1998): "Over the past number of years we have received from former pupils serious complaints of ill treatment and abuse by some Christian Brothers in schools and residential centres.

"And we say to you who have experienced physical or sexual abuse by a Christian Brother, and to you who complained of abuse and were not listened to, we are deeply sorry."

The public atonement came after many allegations were made against the order by former residents of their centres. Overall, the apology - rather than acting as a catharsis - prompted a further debate about the contribution of the order to Irish education and society. Unrelenting media publicity has had a chastening effect on the order. While Blessed Edmund Rice may have begun his mission simply to educate the poor boys of Waterford in a converted stable, times have changed. The order now has one of the State's, largest public relations companies, Fleishman Hillard Saunders, representing its interests in the media.

While the images of the strap may linger on, the order is moving forward in progressive ways, says Father Luke Monahan, head of education services at the Marino Institute in Dublin, which is owned by the order. "We recently did a survey, known as the Identity Project, and it showed that parents valued the characteristics of a Christian Brothers education." He says parents were saying "yes, there were problems in the past, but we want to stay with this tradition because it values good discipline, caring for the weaker pupils and building good relationships".

According to Monahan, "We were surprised even ourselves to find that 67 per cent of those surveyed were favourable disposed towards the Christian Brother ethos," he says.

Freda Kelly, director of the education development office with the order's St Mary's province, says, despite some preconceptions, the order is "still leading the pack in terms of education". It knows, he says, what its core values are and now it has to set about enforcing them. Monahan puts it another way: "We have to go from the brochure to the reality."

In the final analysis, it is through the schools and their contribution that the order's work should be judged, says Brother Michael Murray, its spokesman. "I hope people who went to our schools will look at the quality of the education and the philosophy behind it and take that away with them," he says. He, along with many people in the schools, says adverse publicity has not turned parents off sending their children to the schools.

Brother Donal de Barra, of Colaiste Eoin school in Stillorgan, Co Dublin, is one of the few brother-principals left. "I have not once heard parents saying they don't want to send their children to my school for that reason. I find people very friendly towards me and have never had any problems," he says. Demand is very high for places at the school and he cannot take in all applicants, he adds.

"People like what our schools offer, because we encourage a love of Gaelic culture and an Irish education," he says. While the harsh discipline is gone, he says Christian Brothers' schools like his have not changed in other ways.

"We still have the Hail Mary on the hour and don't have an entrance exam," he explains. At the co-educational Westland Row CBS in the centre of Dublin, the principal, Mary Fleming, says the drive to educate all comers continues. "Our intake is from around the area and that is the history of this school. We take in everyone and do our best with them." She says no one regrets that discipline in Christian Brothers' schools has changed in recent decades. "You have to be tough. But how tough can you be, without damaging children?" She says parents still retain great affection for CBS schools. "They even remember from their own days how the brothers gave poorer children scholarships and worked with them closely."

While some of the order's schools are fee-paying, most are not. Brother Murray says the mission to educate the poor - begun by founder Blessed Ignatius Edmund Rice - will continue. However, this mission will not be accomplished any longer by the brothers alone. They plan to set up new trusteeship structures, more than likely on a provincial basis, says Brother Murray. These trusts - which will effectively be responsible for the order's almost 80 secondary schools in Ireland - will be dominated by lay people, not the brothers.

For the second biggest teaching order in the State, the importance of this shift cannot be understated. The drain on vocations is one reason for taking this step (being planned in consultation with the Conference of Religious in Ireland), but the transformation of the economic and educational landscape is another.

Brother Murray puts it succinctly. "When the brothers began their mission, there was no one providing education for young Catholic boys and that was the gap which Edmund Rice filled," he says. "That provision has been provided now."

Nonetheless, he cautions that the decision to step back from the trusteeship of schools should not be mistaken for the order leaving education. "The future trusts and future trustees will carry on the ethos of the order. They will understand the form of Catholic education the order has designed and continue to help it flourish."

Concerned that supporters of the order might regard the move as diluting Rice's teachings, Brother Murray is clear this is not being considered. "Edmund Rice wanted to end a system of religious discrimination, to rescue the youth from an oppressive political system, to give children the prospect of employment and to end lives starved of spiritual nourishment," he says. "And we believe we will still be achieving these things with the new structures".