ARTANE HEARINGS 5
Q. At the top of page 12 of the submission, you give some indication of the workload of the Brothers' teaching.
A. Yes.
Q. Could you just tell the Commission about that?
A. The teaching Brothers were also responsible for supervision. Whereas, the disciplinarian had overall responsibility for supervising people, obviously one person wasn't going to be able to supervise anything ranging from 400 to 800, depending on the students in the yard. There was a rota of Brothers who supervised during break times and so on, who supervised the dormitories in the morning when the children were rising, at night when they went there and prior to going to bed and preparations and so on,and a supervision rota for that as well, then the dining room. All aspects of supervision required the assistance of the other Brothers and that mainly was the lot of the teaching Brothers simply because they were active and young and able for it. Essentially they were providing what was almost a 24 hour seven day a week service.
Q. Did they get any holidays?
A. They did, they would have got a month's holidays in each summer and shorter breaks during Christmas and Easter.
Q. I would like you to comment on an item that appears in one of the visitation reports, this would be a report of the Christian Brothers' own inspectorate who would visit from time to time. It is at page 58 of that book of documents you have. One of the comments made in this particular report, which is dated May 1968, just a year before it closed, it says:
"There was a feeling among them that we do the work, that it has some basis. It does not help that some of the senior Brothers have little sympathy for the younger Brothers who have very long hours in a very wearying day's work for the most part seven days a week. They have some justification for their belief that they are being watched and criticised by the older non-teaching Brothers." This suggests that within the community themselves some of them felt they had a very heavy workload.
A. They had a very heavy workload, that is true. I think the reference there was, and I referred to it in some other section of the submission, that a lot of the older brothers who had retired and so on, they were still people who looked back to the Artane of the 1940's and the 1950's, and when the younger generation then were moving along and did bring in change bit by bit, sometimes it was resisted because people thought that the system that they knew was tried and tested and that it shouldn't be changed,and so on. As you can see from the submission, gradually change did come in and significant change in the late 1950's and early 1906's and right through the 1960's.
Q. The disciplinarian also had a very onerous day, would that be right?
A. Yes.
Q. You talk about this in the summary at the end of paragraph 2.6 of the submission.
A. Yes.
Q. It is on page 13. You say: "The role was an onerous one because of the many and varied duties associated with the post."
A. Yes.
Q. Did that impose any stresses or strains on the disciplinarian, do you think?
A. Well, on individuals obviously I don't know because I don't know the individuals, but it certainly was an onerous task, the same as the principalship of the school, either primary or secondary, is an onerous task. The disciplinarian was responsible for order and safety, for organising home visits, for organising Godparents, for ensuring that boys didn't abscond, for discipline. The one thing I want to say is that in one sense it is a misnomer because the issuing of sanctions wasn't the primary role of the disciplinarian, the primary role of the disciplinarian was the care and welfare of the pupils outside of school time. It did, of course, entail dealing with recalcitrance and issuing punishments and so on, but that wasn't the primary role. The discipline in question was a positive discipline rather than a negative one.
A. Yes.
Q. Could you just tell the Commission about that?
A. The teaching Brothers were also responsible for supervision. Whereas, the disciplinarian had overall responsibility for supervising people, obviously one person wasn't going to be able to supervise anything ranging from 400 to 800, depending on the students in the yard. There was a rota of Brothers who supervised during break times and so on, who supervised the dormitories in the morning when the children were rising, at night when they went there and prior to going to bed and preparations and so on,and a supervision rota for that as well, then the dining room. All aspects of supervision required the assistance of the other Brothers and that mainly was the lot of the teaching Brothers simply because they were active and young and able for it. Essentially they were providing what was almost a 24 hour seven day a week service.
Q. Did they get any holidays?
A. They did, they would have got a month's holidays in each summer and shorter breaks during Christmas and Easter.
Q. I would like you to comment on an item that appears in one of the visitation reports, this would be a report of the Christian Brothers' own inspectorate who would visit from time to time. It is at page 58 of that book of documents you have. One of the comments made in this particular report, which is dated May 1968, just a year before it closed, it says:
"There was a feeling among them that we do the work, that it has some basis. It does not help that some of the senior Brothers have little sympathy for the younger Brothers who have very long hours in a very wearying day's work for the most part seven days a week. They have some justification for their belief that they are being watched and criticised by the older non-teaching Brothers." This suggests that within the community themselves some of them felt they had a very heavy workload.
A. They had a very heavy workload, that is true. I think the reference there was, and I referred to it in some other section of the submission, that a lot of the older brothers who had retired and so on, they were still people who looked back to the Artane of the 1940's and the 1950's, and when the younger generation then were moving along and did bring in change bit by bit, sometimes it was resisted because people thought that the system that they knew was tried and tested and that it shouldn't be changed,and so on. As you can see from the submission, gradually change did come in and significant change in the late 1950's and early 1906's and right through the 1960's.
Q. The disciplinarian also had a very onerous day, would that be right?
A. Yes.
Q. You talk about this in the summary at the end of paragraph 2.6 of the submission.
A. Yes.
Q. It is on page 13. You say: "The role was an onerous one because of the many and varied duties associated with the post."
A. Yes.
Q. Did that impose any stresses or strains on the disciplinarian, do you think?
A. Well, on individuals obviously I don't know because I don't know the individuals, but it certainly was an onerous task, the same as the principalship of the school, either primary or secondary, is an onerous task. The disciplinarian was responsible for order and safety, for organising home visits, for organising Godparents, for ensuring that boys didn't abscond, for discipline. The one thing I want to say is that in one sense it is a misnomer because the issuing of sanctions wasn't the primary role of the disciplinarian, the primary role of the disciplinarian was the care and welfare of the pupils outside of school time. It did, of course, entail dealing with recalcitrance and issuing punishments and so on, but that wasn't the primary role. The discipline in question was a positive discipline rather than a negative one.
posted by The Knitter | Sunday, September 18, 2005
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