Sir, - I would like to say a word for the Christian Brothers.
Many years ago I attended Francis Street CBS where our primary school teacher was Brother Thomas Devane from Cahirciveen. There were 63 kids in the class and the brother himself was about 21 and studying for a BA. In that class of 63 boys, we had the national average in intelligence, stupidity, poverty and comparative riches.
The first exam we had to do was the primary certificate in Irish, English and arithmetic. All 63 of us passed the primary which speaks for itself in relation to this brother's kind approach to his class. His lessons for life included one day telling us to beware of the conceited young woman who would wait until the priest had just completed serving communion before making her parade up the centre aisle for all to see. We looked at each other about what kind of bitch might she be who would be such an exhibitionist. Brother Devane continued to write on the board and after a minute or two turned to the class and made the most compelling and influencing intervention in my young life. "Boys," says he, "I have just been guilty of a great lack of charity. I was just thinking that the woman I mentioned might have been looking after her sick mother or might have had a very good reason for being late and was simply doing her best to be on time although it may not have looked that way." There was silence for a few seconds while we took what was happening on board. Here was an adult power figure admitting that he could be wrong. The heads that had begun to nod one way now nodded in the other. A lesson for life and I am still talking about it 40 years later.
I told that story to my son, Joseph O'Connor, the novelist, many years ago and it is incorporated into his novel Desperados, although no names are mentioned. I regard it as a quiet and permanent in memoriam for the late Tommy Devane and his colleagues who never savaged a child. - Yours, etc.,
MSc, BL,
14 Merton Road,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.