The teacher difficulty, experienced on all sides of our work, was probably felt more acutely in regard to the specialised teachers of agriculture than in any other connection.  Here it was necessary to take the young men brought up upon farms and possessed of the normal qualifications of the Irish practical farmer.  We then had to make them into teachers by adding to their inherited and home-manufactured capacities a scientific training.  In the training of agricultural teachers the Albert Institute, Glasnevin, has been utilised by the Department.  This school has also been re-organised to meet the new programme, and it will probably form in future a link between the winter schools of agriculture and the Royal College of Science in the training of our agricultural teachers.

Partly by these methods, partly by the temporary engagement of lecturers on special subjects, and partly by the appointment of trained teachers from England or Scotland, the system of itinerant instruction has been brought into operation as fully as could be expected in the time.  Already half the County Committees have been provided with County instructors, while the remainder have nearly all drafted schemes and allocated funds for a similar purpose, ready to go to work as soon as more teachers have been trained.

The Itinerant Instruction scheme, it may be pointed out, besides one obvious, has another less immediately recognisable purpose.  The direct business of the itinerant instructor is, by the aid of experimental plots, simple lectures, and demonstrations, to teach the farmers of his district as much as they can take in without the scientific preparation in which, as adults who have grown up under the old system of education, they are still lacking.  But he does more than that.  He not only conducts a school for adults, but in the very process of instruction he necessarily makes them aware of the vital necessity of a school for the young; and they begin, as parents, to understand and to desire the kind of instruction in the schools of the country which will prepare their children to take more advantage of the advanced teaching in agriculture than they themselves can ever hope to do.

This preparation is provided for as follows.  To the Department, as has already been explained, was handed over the administration of the Science and Art Grants formerly administered by South Kensington.  The Department accordingly drew up a programme of experimental science and drawing, carrying capitation grants, for day secondary schools.  The Intermediate Education Board, acting on the suggestion of the Consultative Committee for Co-ordinating Education,[51] adopted this programme and at the same time undertook to accept the reports of the Department’s inspectors as the basis of their awards in the new “subject.”  These steps insured the rapid and general introduction of this practical teaching in secondary schools, and, owing particularly to the spirit in which their authorities and teaching staffs accepted the innovation, the work has been carried out with the happiest results.