The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Alfie Byrne, complained this week in 1937 about "savage" sentences of three to five years in industrial schools imposed on 7 to 11 year olds for robbing orchards. The senior District Court judge, EJ Little, denied there had been any such sentences and offered this defence of industrial schools. -
JOE JOYCE
THE GROTESQUE misrepresentation of the functions of the industrial school system must claim my first attention, said Mr Little.
In Christian ages the last wish of departing souls found expression in the foundation of free schools for poor scholars. In modern times humanitarians scatter largess like medieval monarchs in the endowment of burses for poor scholars. The industrial school system is for a poor nation an expression of the Christian office in praise of discipline, by the foundation of free boarding schools for poor scholars, and their poverty, their tender years, their destitution is their sole title of admission to these schools.
The management of these schools is the lifework of men and women of gentle breeding, who have given up all to devote themselves to the care and education of these children of the poor. No child that has been sentenced is admitted there. These schools are for the children of the poor what boarding schools were for us, and still are for our children – schools to which we were sent and they are sent when parents are dead, or absent, or when experience teaches that more adventurous and daring temperaments must be guided by a firmer system of authority than most parents have time to give.
The records of these schools prove that their children are in a slightly larger percentage successful in later life than those educated in other environments. Again, children committed to those schools are “not put out of the way for a period of three to five years ”.
The Lord Mayor knows – it is part of his duty to know it – that these schools are not out of the way; that they abound within a penny fare of the centre of this city, and that just as we in our school days went home for Christmas and midsummer holidays, so also these boys and girls go home for the Christmas and midsummer holidays whenever the home influence is a happy influence.
Just as we at the public schools provided for the rich, were and are visited by the parents who gave us life each Sunday, and at times of sickness, so also the parents of these poor scholars are welcomed every Sunday, and encouraged to visit their children in these schools.
One of the fundamental rights of our Constitution, as set forth in Article 42 is expressed in these words: “The State shall provide for free primary education, and where parents, for physical or moral reason, fail in their duty, then the State, as guardian of the common good, shall supply the place of the parent in the assertion of the natural and imprescribable rights of the child.”
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