Open Day at Carlow Vocational School
(C.A. 15-3-90)
The invitation to attend the open day at the school recently brought my mind back to 1945 to a similar event which I was responsible for organising in what was then called the Carlow Technical School and located in Dublin Street, now the County Library.
This early effort was a rather modest affair in comparison with the recent one. It involved four or five teachers and less than 100 students. Nevertheless, it served the purpose of bringing home to the general public of Carlow, for the first time, the type and quality of work being done in the school, with the resultant spinoff of a big and sustained increase in enrolments. Forty-five years ago the equipment was pretty rudimentary and many gadgets which couldn’t be bought were homemade.
I responded to the kind invitation of Mr. John Keenan, Acting Principal, by rambling down to the Kilkenny Road partly to “pass myself” and partly out of curiosity to see what sort of display my successors would put on. I was prepared to be impressed in a mildly patronising way and even told my wife that I’d be back in half an hour, because, as I said “I know the place like the back of my hand having been involved with it for so many years”.
Right enough the structure of the school was essentially the same as when I left it twelve years ago but there the similarity ended. For one thing, the equipment on display was far more sophisticated and the students operating it had acquired skills which were unknown in the school in my time. Furthermore, those operating the electronics spoke a language I didn’t even understand.
Today’s draughtsmen/women (I refuse to use that horrible word ‘draughtsperson’) can produce perfectly finished drawings in about the same time as it took yesterday’s students to sharpen their pencils and adjust their paper on drawing boards.
The science labs have come a long way from test tubes, tin cans, ball bearings and spring balances. Some of the experiments on display illustrated principles more graphically than we could with chalk and talk. Some were literally hair raising. Biology, too, has progressed a long way from frog spawn and dead rats with, for example, realistic models of human embryos.
Business Studies Departments contain equipment which must have cost more than that of the entire school at one time and students learn skills which once were unheard of and are now a highly saleable commodity in the modern world of commerce.
Needless to say, the departments which attracted most attention, especially mine, were those of Building and Engineering. Here the equipment is still fundamental but much more sophisticated and processes such as enamelling and plastic art, to name just two, were unknown in schools a couple of decades ago.
I am afraid I had time for only a rather cursory inspection of the Art and Crafts, Language and Literary, Geography and Home Economics Departments. So much for my original intention of spending a mere thirty minutes visit. After over three hours I can have seen only a fraction of the exhibits.
Even allowing for my natural bias towards this form of education I think it can be said that the future of this country is in safe hands when we can educate our youth in such skills. Alternatively, and regrettably, if they have to emigrate, they can carry with them highly marketable qualifications. I speak from personal experience having ‘exported’ three of my five sons.
On a more personal note, I was delighted to meet so many of my former colleagues and students — some of the latter even subjected me to a bit of mild ribbing about how things were in my day.
I am proud of the fact that so many of my former students entered the teaching profession, not to speak of the thousands who made their marks in other professions both at home and abroad.
Sincere congratulations to Mr. Keenan, to Mr. Liam Hayden, Vice Principal, and to the other members of the staff, not the least of whom is Jack Sheehan, without whose co-operation hardly any function of the school could operate successfully.
Teaching Staff, Vocational School, Carlow. 1976
J. Conway, D. Murphy, B. Fitzharris, J. Behan, J. Whitty, R. Holohan, P. O’Mahony, P. Collins, M. Wall, M. Daly, M. McAneny and A. Kelly. L. Hayden, J. Keenan, S. Maher, L. Dowling, M. McNamara, A. Whitty, P. Carr, M. Lynch, M. Madden, M. Kinsella, M. King and P. O’Connor. M. Scully, M. O’Grady, M. Sheridan and B. Murray.
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