Happy days going through the fields

I have not had the opportunity to read Alice Taylor's To School Through the Fields, but I went to Cullane National School in County Mayo through the fields. Especially in summertime and whenever there was snow. By road, the small two-teacher school, now closed but not derelict, was little more than a mile. Across the fields it was somewhat closer and more of an adventure.

On a hot summer's day the lure of the countryside could prove too much and on a couple of occasions we never quite managed to get as far as the school. On one occasion a price was paid, as we each got "six of the best" and a warning that our parents would be told the next time. The cane was used but sparingly and as we got older we thought it was unmanly to escape it entirely. Shortly after I started school the woman teacher responsible for the infant grades left and was replaced by a very young, conscientious woman teacher. It was a major disruption in the life of the school, but she and we survived and better.

The senior classes were a different story. The master was an older, decent and kindly man, but arguably not numbered among the best teachers in Ireland. In his early days he was a gifted footballer, but he was a little too fond of the drop. He seemed to be tortured by demons we couldn't understand. For hours he could stare out the window where, as John McGahern would say, "nothing ever happened".

The master's terror was the unpredictability of the times of arrival of the Parish Priest. But every time we conspired with the master to defeat the PP's inspections.

I managed to win a scholarship to St Jarlath's College in Tuam, Co Galway. My father intervened and instead I cycled the five miles to St Colman's College, Claremorris, Co Mayo, a diocesan college founded in 1945. The teachers were all male. Only one was a lay person and the only thing the college had in common with my primary school was that the heating system, such as it was, was fuelled by turf. Otherwise everything by comparison was very strict and proper and regimented. We even had to attend for a half day on Saturday with a corresponding half-day off for football mid-week. Football seemed to dominate our lives. It consumed our non-classroom hours and even diverted some of them. No matter how inclement the weather, we cycled to school six days a week. We thought nothing of repeating the journey on most Sundays to play a match. Club and county football was very strong in Connacht in the Sixties. After the 1964 All-Ireland, the Galway captain, John Donnellan, visited St Colman's with the Sam Maguire Cup. It didn't get better than that. Two years later three of my classmates won All-Ireland Minor football medals.

There was little tolerance of other codes. We resorted to various subterfuges to stay in touch with the fortunes of Tom Kiernan and the rugby team. One schoolmate, more adroit in front of goal with his head than in front on the blackboard, was warned off the evils of soccer in no uncertain terms.

I returned for the first and only time in 1995, having been prevailed upon as Minister for Commerce, Science and Technology, to attend the 50th year celebrations. I was taken aback by the extent to which the night was dominated by grown men in huddles, animatedly recalling the corporal punishment aspect of their schooldays. The result of corporal punishment was that young boys who couldn't hack it, dropped out. In my own class, only 16 out of 32 that started survived to the Leaving Certificate. Corporal punishment, I am sure, was not solely responsible but it was hugely responsible. There was nothing sinister about it, just its unsuitability for the profession, and the lack of supervision and non-intervention by the community.

It is a comment on the indomitable spirit of youth that none of this suppressed an otherwise enjoyable time at school. Nor should it reflect on the reputation of the school or on many of the fine teachers. It was just the times that were in it. Inevitably, however, it had a formative influence on those who survived the system and who responded or rebelled in different ways. But it is in the dropouts, the young people who couldn't cope, who are the real casualties. Thank heavens those days have gone forever.