2 April 1998 Edition
The bashful Brothers
By Eoghan MacCormaic
Trauma. It's a difficult one to measure, isn't it? I think I was traumatised by an experience I once had in the Christian Brothers' school in Derry.
It was when I was about ten, and the Brothers used to show films in one of their classrooms on Saturday afternoons. The real brothers and myself would trek over from the Waterside, down the Folly to buy sweets in Connolly's shop, and then wind our way up the path to the flicks. A great advantage of this matinee was that we didn't go to the school and so felt safe from the threat. And threat there was. In the innocent network of childhood we all knew what Brothers were to be feared because stories would return from elder brothers and cousins and uncles. Everybody knew.
On the day I was traumatised, we were on our way up the path when suddenly a man in front of us began attacking a statue. Sacred Heart of Jesus. It was a ferocious attack and in no time God was headless. We ran, terrified at the act, and terrified at the sacrilege, to the school.
A patrolling Christian Brother grabbed us from behind ready to whallop us for running but we were saved from the leather when he too heard the smashing of statues and abandoned us for more meaty prey.
I suppose I soon got over the shock of seeing the statues being smashed, though the memory remains with me. I've often wondered what possessed that poor man to vent his spleen in such a way. Maybe he was living out his dream, a dream millions of Irish children must have had on the bleakest of school days, of coming back with a vengeance. It was lucky for the Brothers that he only took their statues to task. Just think of the consequences if the Brothers had been teaching in the USA.
The Brothers have been a part of the fabric of Ireland for the past hundred years, revered in public, reviled in private, and even for those of us who hadn't the benefit of their educational methods, their name remains synonymous with the notion of learn the lesson or be taught a lesson.
The wonder is that it has taken so long to arrive at the stage we're at, where this week the Brothers have publicly admitted to wrongdoing, widespread and truly terrible wrongdoing to generations of Irish children.
There were plenty of clues. When Christy Moore sang Mick Hanley's words of woe, that he was `lured by the rocking horse, sweets and the bualadh bois, with fifty wild boys to a room' did they smile at the memory? Did they think it was poetic licence when he crooned of `Wild Christian Brothers, sharpening their leathers'?
The truth is that the Brothers, like so many other ranks of teachers in Ireland over the years, abused both their positions and their pupils. Some pedagogues became paedophiles, máistirí became maistíní. The Jesuits boasted `give us the boy and we'll give you the man' yet the truth was that the education system often took not only the boy and girl, but their boyhood and childhood too. The damage done may remain with us, in a hatred of learning passed on from parent to child, for many years to come.
There can be no doubt that today's teachers are better, are kinder, are motivated by different values than their predecessors and we should be grateful for that, but when the small voices speak of fear in the classroom, we should listen. And we should believe. And we should never give unbridled power over the weakest in our society to any unaccountable group of men or women again.
Trauma. It's a difficult one to measure, isn't it? I think I was traumatised by an experience I once had in the Christian Brothers' school in Derry.
It was when I was about ten, and the Brothers used to show films in one of their classrooms on Saturday afternoons. The real brothers and myself would trek over from the Waterside, down the Folly to buy sweets in Connolly's shop, and then wind our way up the path to the flicks. A great advantage of this matinee was that we didn't go to the school and so felt safe from the threat. And threat there was. In the innocent network of childhood we all knew what Brothers were to be feared because stories would return from elder brothers and cousins and uncles. Everybody knew.
On the day I was traumatised, we were on our way up the path when suddenly a man in front of us began attacking a statue. Sacred Heart of Jesus. It was a ferocious attack and in no time God was headless. We ran, terrified at the act, and terrified at the sacrilege, to the school.
A patrolling Christian Brother grabbed us from behind ready to whallop us for running but we were saved from the leather when he too heard the smashing of statues and abandoned us for more meaty prey.
I suppose I soon got over the shock of seeing the statues being smashed, though the memory remains with me. I've often wondered what possessed that poor man to vent his spleen in such a way. Maybe he was living out his dream, a dream millions of Irish children must have had on the bleakest of school days, of coming back with a vengeance. It was lucky for the Brothers that he only took their statues to task. Just think of the consequences if the Brothers had been teaching in the USA.
The Brothers have been a part of the fabric of Ireland for the past hundred years, revered in public, reviled in private, and even for those of us who hadn't the benefit of their educational methods, their name remains synonymous with the notion of learn the lesson or be taught a lesson.
The wonder is that it has taken so long to arrive at the stage we're at, where this week the Brothers have publicly admitted to wrongdoing, widespread and truly terrible wrongdoing to generations of Irish children.
There were plenty of clues. When Christy Moore sang Mick Hanley's words of woe, that he was `lured by the rocking horse, sweets and the bualadh bois, with fifty wild boys to a room' did they smile at the memory? Did they think it was poetic licence when he crooned of `Wild Christian Brothers, sharpening their leathers'?
The truth is that the Brothers, like so many other ranks of teachers in Ireland over the years, abused both their positions and their pupils. Some pedagogues became paedophiles, máistirí became maistíní. The Jesuits boasted `give us the boy and we'll give you the man' yet the truth was that the education system often took not only the boy and girl, but their boyhood and childhood too. The damage done may remain with us, in a hatred of learning passed on from parent to child, for many years to come.
There can be no doubt that today's teachers are better, are kinder, are motivated by different values than their predecessors and we should be grateful for that, but when the small voices speak of fear in the classroom, we should listen. And we should believe. And we should never give unbridled power over the weakest in our society to any unaccountable group of men or women again.