A Platonic-style custodianship, or, if you like, a customary straitlacedness in matters cultural and spiritual, has been, and largely remains an enduring feature of Irish education. If I might add a further observation, it is that this customary custodianship tends to becloud the more pressing shortcomings which diminish the quality of work in schools and colleges at present. Of course these are large claims and within the space of an essay such as this, one can only trace the historical evidence in brief outline. Such claims, moreover, may seem doubly strange when one acknowledges that the literature and discourse of education at present are everywhere pervaded with consideration of emergent needs and with phrases such as 'the challenge of change'.