Robinson Crusoe appears to have had it both ways. Having wined and dined in old English Society, and having travelled all over the world, he suddenly found himself (fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be) alone on a tropical island; the bliss of solitude, as Wordsworth might have said, un-hampered by the worry and the fret of the contemporary society. He was lucky or unlucky depending on one’s point of view, but his story remains interesting right up to the present day.

Man isolated from society, however, is exactly what Robinson Crusoe was; a story; a fiction. Man becomes man only when he is a member of a group, of a society. The three elements of society which raise man to the highest level of the animal kingdom are recognisably Speech, Thought, Culture. On closer examination, we can see that all three form the foundation stone of Education.

Every student in Colaiste Dhulaigh, as in any school is a member of a very important group, the class. Through the class, as much as the teacher, the skills of Speech, Thought and Culture are transmitted in the most subtle of ways. The complexity of the relationship between all three can be seen when we realise that our culture largely determines what students learn (i.e. the curriculum) they learn through concepts and thought, and language and thought are inextricably linked together from the earliest years of life.