In defence of fee-paying schools [IrishTimes]
- Published: 20 September 2011
GEORGE HOOK got his chance in life from his hard-working parents, who scrimped to give him the best education they could. That’s why he’s a passionate advocate of fee-paying schools
AS A CHILD, only a handful of my neighbours on Albert Road in Cork did the Leaving Certificate. In fact, most of them left school with only a primary education. They were condemned in 1950s Ireland to emigration at best or unemployment at home at worst. There was a word for unemployed young men. They were known as corner boys, because every day they congregated at the street corner, playing pitch and toss for a few pennies, or passed the time bullying young kids on their way to and from school.
We lived in a two-up, two-down terraced house with an outside toilet and no washing facilities. My father was a wages clerk with the bus company; Micheál Martin’s father collected his pay packet from him every Friday. (The supposed socially inferior bus driver Martin earned more than the white-collared Hook.) My father handed over his pay packet, unopened, to his wife, who gave him back something for cigarettes and pocket money and then worked miracles with the remainder to feed and clothe her family.
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