I have already, in this chapter, indicated that outside large industrial centres, our educational policy is, broadly speaking, twofold.  We seek, in the first place, through our programme in Experimental Science and its allied subjects, now so generally adopted by secondary schools in Ireland, to give that fundamental training in science and scientific method which, most thinkers are agreed, constitutes a condition precedent to sound specialised teaching of agriculture as well as other forms of industry.  We seek further, by methods less academic in character—­for example, by itinerant instruction which is of value chiefly to those with whom ‘school’ is a thing of the past—­to teach not only improved agricultural methods but also simple industries, and to promote the cultivation of industrial habits which are as essential to the success of farming as to that of every other occupation.  Classes in manual work of various kinds—­woodwork, carpentry, applied drawing and building construction, lace and crochet making, needlework, dressmaking and embroidery, sprigging, hosiery and other such subjects, have been numerously and steadily attended.

I do not ignore the argument that such home industries must in time give way before the competition of highly-organised factory industries.  The simple answer is that it is desirable, and indeed necessary, to employ the energy now running to waste in our rural districts—­energy which cannot in the nature of things be employed in highly-organised industries.  To the small farmer and his family, time is a realisable, though too often unrealised, asset, and it is part of our aim to aid the family income by employing their waste time.  Even if we can only cause them to do at home what they now pay someone else to do, we shall not only have improved their budget but shall have contributed to the elevation of the standard of home life, and thus, in no small measure, to the solution of the difficult problem of rural life in Ireland.

I think the reader will now understand the general character of the problem with which we were confronted and the means by which its solution is being sought.  Our policy was not one which was likely to commend itself to the “man in the street.”  Indeed, to be quite candid, it was a little disappointing even to myself that I could not immortalise my appointment by erecting monuments both to my constructive ability and to my educational zeal in the shape of stately edifices at convenient railway centres, preferably along the tourist routes.  We have had to stand the fire of the critic fresh from his holiday on the Continent where he had seen agricultural and technological institutions, magnificently housed and lavishly equipped, fitting generations of young men and young women for competition with our less fortunate countrymen.  It is hard to prevail in argument against the man who has gone and seen for himself.  It is useless to point out to the man with a kodak that the Corinthian