I may add that more than one hundred and fifty of these qualified teachers are now at work under County Committees.
I have already, in this chapter, indicated that outside large industrial centres, our educational policy is, broadly speaking, twofold.

We seek, in the first place, through our programme in Experimental Science and its allied subjects, now so generally adopted by secondary schools in Ireland, to give that fundamental training in science and scientific method which, most thinkers are agreed, constitutes a condition precedent to sound specialised teaching of agriculture as well as other forms of industry.

We seek further, by methods less academic in character--for example, by itinerant instruction which is of value chiefly to those with whom 'school' is a thing of the past--to teach not only improved agricultural methods but also simple industries, and to promote the cultivation of industrial habits which are as essential to the success of farming as to that of every other occupation.

Classes in manual work of various kinds--woodwork, carpentry, applied drawing and building construction, lace and crochet making, needlework, dressmaking and embroidery, sprigging, hosiery and other such subjects, have been numerously and steadily attended.
I do not ignore the argument that such home industries must in time give way before the competition of highly-organised factory industries.

The simple answer is that it is desirable, and indeed necessary, to employ the energy now running to waste in our rural districts--energy which cannot in the nature of things be employed in highly-organised industries.