Helen Murphy is vice-principal of Coogue NS, Knock, Co Mayo.
Patrick McCabe's Butcher Boy, the book, made me sad and the film version of it made me even sadder. To think that a child could be so mixed up and troubled in a family and a community which didn't understand and didn't seem to care about the gravity of his situation is frighteningly thought-provoking.
I understand black comedy well enough to realise that in order to be effective it must be hugely over-stated and melodramatic, so when you strip away the histrionics in Francie Brady's sad life, you become acutely aware of the fragility and delicacy of the child's mind and the chaos that ensues when reality and fantasy become confounded and inverted.
I chuckled inwardly when reading the book and I also laughed loudly and uproariously at the antics of the engaging and talented actor Eamon Owens, who played the part so credibly. But the real story is so disturbing and so depressing that it behoves every teacher in the land to be even more alert and more vigilant lest another Francie Brady should be incubating in our classrooms in front of our very eyes.
I found it particularly depressing that the women in the story were so stupid and uncaring and unfeminine. They only became animated when something foul and dreadful and mad and murderous occurred.
The clergy were equally cruel, snobbish and uncaring and the teacher-figure in Francie Brady's life did not even feature.
Technology was only in its infancy then, with its black-and-white television, yet its influence was enormous. What then could have become of a similarly bright boy in this advanced technological age who is entrapped in a crazy, dysfunctional family, living in a selfish, nuclear society?
Let us not dwell on it. This is a macabre tale which makes us howl with laughter, only to stop us dead in out tracks and make us weep at length for our children and for our society.
Pat O'Connor is principal of St Enda's Community School, Limerick.
My Daughter Aoife gave me Losing the Weight of the World by Kramer and Kramer (Gill and MacMillan) for Christmas. It came at the right time - just as I was asking myself what on earth the Christmas rush was all about. It's a lovely book, beautifully and simply written by two American psychologists - one a clinical psychologist, the other a teacher and professional writer. The authors are critical of the way we live our lives in the West. They argue that we spend most of our time rushing about doing things, while to relax we use mood-altering drugs and watch violent and sensation-enhancing television and films. In the West, they say, we are so busy doing that we have little time for creating a balanced life - that is, a balance between doing and being. They point to a deep malaise in our society. There's a lovely few lines where they note that we can send email and faxes anywhere in the world, we have pagers and mobile phones - and yet we don't speak to family members or to our neighbours! According to Kramer and Kramer, we spend so much time doing that we don't have any time left for being. As a result we have no sense of our own goodness, self-worth or value.
We judge ourselves on our activities and our material success. But as human beings, they say, we need to have moments of calm, when we can reflect and dwell on beauty and goodness. I find this a reinforcing, calming and nourishing book. It's a great antidote to the hyperactive state in which most of us live. Reading even a chapter makes you feel good. I'd recommend it as a lovely book to read over Easter. I'm using it in health education with my Transition Year and Leaving Cert students.
Mary Dowling Maher is the former president of the ASTI; she teaches at the CBS, Crumlin, Dublin.
It all turned out okay. I would have hated one of those endings where I'm expected to figure out what happened or might have happened. The end of Good Will Hunting, when the boy from the wrong side of the track went ahead and did what he wanted to do, left me with a warm feeling coming out of the cinema. Will, the young man in question, followed his dream. In a movie with a very rich storyline for a teacher with a passion for class issues and education, I was bound to be hopelessly attracted to the story. Having spent most of my working life teaching mathematics and chemistry, I was awestruck by this very rare genius solving complicated problems all over the place.
No, I didn't ever meet one like this and I suppose I'm unlikely to. As I am currently studying counselling psychology as part of the career guidance course, I feel it is far more likely that I would meet a youngster who was very bright, showing great promise and searching desperately for a sense of himself than some whizz at solving organic chemistry equations in an instant.
Robin Williams plays a therapist, Sean, who challenges the young genius, Will. The therapy sessions are carried out on the instruction of a maths professor who is convinced that the best thing for Will and the professor himself would be a mathematical career in some lucrative post.
I enjoyed the determination of the slightly eccentric therapist who believes in Will and through silences, followed by some good humour and plenty straight talking, all timed to perfection, gets through and shows the value of the therapeutic relationship, a healing one. Even the reluctant, and at times, cynical client was on a winner with this particular therapist.
I am struck by the ease with which youngsters like Will can fall into crime. The uphill struggle for Will, whom we realise was abandoned following mistreatment early on in life, makes me wonder why, if we knew all along who is at real risk of dropping out of school and following a path of destruction, that it took so long to initiate the baby steps in place now.
Teachers, go to see it, the optimism will do you good.
Ray Kennedy is principal of Templeogue College, Dublin and a former president of ASTI and SSPAI.
The Neighbourhoods of Dublin (Hughes and Hughes £15.75) is written by a Dubliner, Weston St John Joyce (no relation to James), who was born in 1858. I first came across the book in 1971 and was immediately taken with it. The hidden wonders of Dublin are fully revealed within its pages. Since "transferring" to Dublin in 1947 and being able to say truthfully that I lived all over the city, my interest in the Black Pool just "growed like Topsy". From Xavier Avenue to the Homan Strand and from Ballymun to Roundtown, I knew the local lore. The book proved gold to me in filling in the historical and topographical background to the city I grew to know and love.
The Neighbourhoods of Dublin began life in the 1880s as a series of newspaper articles in the Dublin Evening Telegraph and in the Weekly Irish Times. When first published in 1912 the book was immediately successful.
Through these pages we travel from Ringsend to Dunleary to Tinnehinch to Mount Pelier to Rathmines and Baggotrath, on to the Corkagh Powder Mills and Clongowes Wood and Mud Island and St Doulagh's and Grace Dieu and Turvey. We visit Lucan, the Strawberry Beds and Featherbed Pass, Poulaphuca and the English Pale, not forgetting the Coronation Plantation. Separate chapters are devoted to the canals, Martello towers, Donnybrook Fair, the Atmospheric Railway and Lambay. Kinsaley (sic), Drumcondra, Palmerston (park), Rathgar and Scholarstown are all treated and this before the advent of their political connections. Joyce's level of detail is thorough. He allows us to view Dublin with fresh eyes.
It is a truly amazing read for everyone with an interest in Dublin and its environs. The photographs are simply stunning. For the curious who want to know more about "Buck" Jones of Clonliffe and the Battle of Rathgar, this book is a must. My personal fascination for buildings, bridges, secret corners and their history has been sharpened and satisfied by a wealth of information I found here.
It's not surprising that the book has gone through several reprints.
Kate O'Carroll is an English teacher at Wesley College, Dublin, and chairwoman of the English Teachers' Association.
In my student days, college legend had it that a lecturer, no fan of George Eliot, had set the question "How would you defend Middlemarch from a charge of tediousness?" Full marks, it was said, were awarded to one student who had the hard neck to answer, "I wouldn't."
Fascinated, I bought the fat Penguin paperback, took to my bed for the weekend, and dived in - for me, Middlemarch was then, and is now, an ocean of a book. I was expecting moral seriousness but certain sentences burned themselves into my memory with unnerving force. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like having the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar that lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity. The keen vision and feeling, what Henry James called her supreme sense of the vastness and variety of human life, are Eliot's greatest qualities. She guides us expertly through contemporary developments in politics, religion, medicine and economics, always keeping a steady eye on the felt human experience of these abstractions. And her voice, while always authoritative, is never monotone.
She is as deliciously ironic as Jane Austen in her description of Dorothea's desiccated husband, Dr Casaubon, who "determined to abandon himself to the stream of feeling and was perhaps surprised to find what an exceedingly shallow rill it was". Her grotesque characters, such as old Featherstone and the blackmailing Raffles, are drawn with Dickensian gusto. But her range is greater than Austen and her depth greater than Dickens.
Andrew Davies said that adapting it for television was like getting an elephant into a suitcase. Why try? Go for it, all 900 wonderful pages.
