934 TKANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 



efficiency and moral strengtli ; in connection with manual training ; and in 

 connection -with the question in its broadest sense of discipline, order, and 

 method. (2) Mental: the aim of producing a logically disciplined mind. The end 

 of testing here is to see that the observing and reasoning faculty is being rightly 

 trained ; that cram is avoided ; that observing, thinking, and correlating power is 

 being developed. (3) Moral : the test here should aim at ascertaining whether 

 the teachers have the right outlook and influence ; whether the pupil is being really 

 led on to know, admire, and love the right things ; to understand his duties, private 

 and public ; to. select true aims iu life; to develop a noble individuality. The 

 importance, in relation to his moral strength and general efficiency, of making the 

 pupil from an early stage think about his trade, profession, or career in life, and of 

 thus giving a personal and purpose-like character to his education. 



How are these aims being followed or hindered in the Irish educational system 

 at the present time, and how far is it practicable, by improvements in the methods 

 of testing or other means, to get them followed more eliectively ? How far is the 

 work of the system in its diHerent branches, primary, intermediate, technical, 

 agricultural, university, susceptible of development in these directions under 

 existing machinery ? 



(ii) The Correlation of Primary, Secondary, arid University Education 

 in Ireland. By Professor Benjamin Moore, M.A., D.Sc. 



One of the greatest evils in the systems of education in Ireland is the lack of 

 co-ordination which everywhere exists. Instead of the three systems forming 

 one interdependent and harmonious whole, each is worked on a separate and 

 entirely independent plan, so arranged as to prevent one system giving assistance 

 or support to .the others. 



The Board of National Education, which controls the national schools, has 

 entire jurisdiction over the primary sjstem, and in the past has neither sought nor 

 obtained the assistance of the Uuiversiities in the training of primary teacbers or 

 the supervision of work and examination. 



The Intermediate Board, by means of the funds at its disposal, has attained 

 a similar autocratic and bureaucratic control over almost all the secondary or 

 intermediate schools of the country. This Intermediate Board is not in organic 

 relationship with either the National School sjstem on the one band or the 

 Universities on the other, and has disastrously isolated the whole secondary 

 educational system of Ireland. 



The Universities have in tiie past taken no share in moulding and guiding 

 either the primary or the secondary education of the country, but have confined 

 themselves to training students for entrance to one of the so-called learned 

 professions. The whole nation has suffered from this narrow conception of the 

 educational work of a university ; and also the Universities themselves have 

 suflered, even in that portion of work they have been attemjjting, from the defective 

 preparation of their students at entrance. 



The present time when ha])pily two new and modernly equipped universities 

 are coming into existence in Ireland, appears a suitable moment for considering 

 how these defects may best be removed. 



It may almost be laid down as an axiom that, unless the new Universities 

 exercise a potent iulluence on the whole educational system from primary or 

 national schools upwards, they will fail in carrying out their true functions, and 

 of accomplishing the great revival in education which the Irish people have a right 

 10 expect, and do expect, from them. The fundamental changes which, it is urged, 

 are necessary in order to bring the three systems into accord and proper co-ordina- 

 tion may be briefly summarised as follows: — 



Primary or National Education. — The most essential change here is that 

 the training of the teachers should be placed largely under the control of the 

 Universities, or of a body on which the Universities are strongly represented. 

 The teacher in the primary school is the most important teacher in the country, 

 for he teaches the most preponderating class of the population, and that from which 



