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The article talks about the state of education in Ireland and the integration of European countries. A report of the Council of Education on the primary school's curriculum, which is centered on religious doctrine, reading and writing in Irish and English and arithmetic, is offered. The relationship between the schools and the state laid down in the 1937 Constitution of Ireland is discussed. It also discusses the rules and programs for secondary schools, the need to examine the relationship between education and economic progress, the study of European languages, and the dissemination of knowledge about the new Europe.

Ireland has been the victim of invasions since time immemorial. The Romans did not conquer the island but Saint Patrick did. From the 5th to the 9th centuries it was a seat of religious learning, from which missionaries went to all parts of Western Europe. A century or so later the Puritan Cromwell came with his war without quarter, in which men, women, and children were slaughtered. His infamous Settlement in 1653 meant in effect that great landed estates were given his English followers, and thus was inaugurated the absentee landlord system that plagued the island for centuries. The consequences for Ireland of this dispossession have been enormous. Except in the district of Ulster, where landholding Anglo-Saxon farmers cultivated their own farms, the system of vast landed estates was disastrous, because the absentee landlords had little interest in agriculture. In the Republic of Ireland today stiff examinations are set, in Irish, for all those planning to teach. Villages where Irish is the mother tongue of everyone are inundated, especially during the summer, with students who come to perfect their Irish before taking their examinations.