Yet we owe
everything to it that we value most. Through it we become emancipated
citizens of the world. Through it we are able to appreciate what is
beautiful and what is ugly, what is right and what is wrong, what is
permanent and what is merely transitory. If the people of a country can
make it their boast that they are truly educated, they need boast of
little else, for all the rest will have been added unto them.
It will be found next to impossible to draw any argument for Home Rule
from the history of Irish Education during the last decade. Indeed, if a
Nationalist Parliament were now to be established in College Green, it
is more than probable that the progress made by educational reformers
since 1900 would be largely thrown away, and the prospects of still
further improvement endangered and perhaps destroyed.
What has been done in the domain of Irish Education, and what still
remains to be done? Leaving out of account the problem of the
Universities, which, so far as can be seen, has at any rate been
temporarily solved--and solved, let it be marked, under the Legislative
Union, with the participation and consent of the Nationalist
party--there are two broad branches of the educational tree which every
year are growing in volume and putting forth finer leaves and fruit.
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