Memories of school in Athy

MY youngest grandson, Ben, who recently moved with his parents from Cork to Athy started school during the week.

This followed a few weeks in Montessori in Athy, following two years in Montessori in Cork.

Aged five and a half years when he started in junior infants in the local Gaelscoil it made me reflect on when I started in the all-boys St Joseph’s School in Rathstewart, almost 80 years ago. 

I joined my first class on the day of my fourth birthday and was pleasantly surprised to discover a few years ago, on examining the school’s roll books, that another young boy who started that same day was the late Frank English, who was six months older than I.

Frank was my closest friend in adulthood, and we shared many holidays abroad, including a never-to-be-forgotten trip when we thumbed our way around Northern France in 1962.

Nowadays, the educational campus on the Monasterevin Road boasts three primary schools, while the historic Scoil Mhichil Naofa is located off Kirwan’s Lane, where it has always been.

What fascinates me is the fact that in my time, every youngster made his or her entry to school without any previous schooling experience.

No Montessori or creche in those days, while today’s youngsters have both.

Although I wonder if the infants’ school at St Joseph’s, in which there were three classes, was in terms of years spent prior to primary school, the equivalent of modern pre-school facilities. Since writing the above I have learnt that the three years spent in St Joseph’s comprised junior and senior infant classes and the first year of primary school.

When we passed to the Christian Brothers Primary School, we immediately entered the second-year class. So, St Joseph’s school opened by the Sisters of Mercy on a date unknown to me was an early example of a pre-primary school facility.

Memories of my first year in St Joseph’s are uncertain although I can remember my father collecting me and bring me home on his bike after I had a little personal accident. 

I was told in later years that my next-door neighbour Loy Hayden brought me to school on a regular basis, although I cannot remember what may have been many trips to St Joseph’s.

One memory which I return to often was how Sister Brendan, who taught the second-year senior infants’ class, prepared us to receive Holy Communion.

She lined up the young boys up around the classroom and got us to stick out our tongues which she would softly touch with a scissors which hung from her waistband.

Another memory I have is of the class of boys being marched to the Christian Brother’s School in St John’s as we left St. Joseph’s for the last time. My memories were of my Dad whom I saw dressed in his Garda Sergeant uniform standing on the footpath opposite Carolan’s (now Winkles) as we passed by.

I was obviously delighted to see my father, on what was a proud day for me. St Joseph’s School founded by the Sisters of Mercy was where they exclusively taught young boys in a three-classroom school which was pulled down when the construction of the former St Michael’s Church commenced in or around 1960/61. On the day we were brought to the Christian Brothers School we walked in procession by the side of Canon McDonnell’s fine house and the Malt House which was immediately on the Town Hall side of the Canon’s garden.

With the passage of time the shops and businesses we passed on the way to the St John’s Lane School have all changed names or disappeared like the Malt House.

The boys of St Joseph’s School, having gone through junior infants and senior infants, were in first class when they made their First Communion.

The preparation for First Communion was done in Sister Brendan’s second year senior infants’ class with the solemn ceremony performed in St Michael’s Parish Church when we were in the first year of primary school. Communion Day was an important day then as it is today.

After the formal Church ceremony, we were entertained in the local Convent, although I wonder if my memory in that regard is correct, as it may have been the Convent meal provided after Confirmation that I remember.

But of course, the most important part of the First Communion Day was the never-to-be-forgotten coin collection visits to well-known neighbours. If, like me, you were a ‘blow-in’ you had no relations near, so I missed out on the easy targets for collecting coins. There was no question in those days of receiving notes, as money was scarce for all the families in Offaly Street.

My grandson, Ben, continues his education in the Gaelscoil, an unheard-of facility in Athy, 80 years ago. What a wonderful opportunity it presents to him and his classmates, boys and girls alike, to learn and speak our native tongue, something I could not do despite Brother Keogh’s best efforts in secondary school.

Education, as ever, is recognised as a vitally important character builder and current facilities, including free books, acceptable pupil teacher ratios and the often-claimed free education, are reminders of how far education today has progressed.

Contrast this with the 1940s, when families stricken by unemployment and emigration found it so difficult to let their children take full advantage of the educational opportunities of their time.

How well I remember classmates leaving school at the age of 13 or 14 years of age to take up employment in the local asbestos factory and sometimes as messenger boys in local shops.

Life in the meantime has changed, and nowhere more so than in the schools once founded and staffed by the Sisters of Mercy and the Christian Brothers. Today’s schools, both primary and secondary, are co-educational, unlike the schools of my time when the boys and girls were strictly segregated.

Here in Athy, the nuns arrived in 1851 and the Christian Brothers in 1860 and over the next 150 years or so, provided a first-class education for thousands of boys and girls who otherwise would not have had the opportunity to reach their full potential.

We owe a huge debt to the Sisters of Mercy and the Christian Brothers. My grandson, Ben will pass through his school years without being taught as I was by Sisters of Mercy and the Christian Brothers.

No doubt Ben will have memories to equal those of his grandpa, and I wish him and all the other boys and girls starting school this year every happiness and every good wish for the future.