Irish Education

The Ministerial Legacy

Antonia McManus

• Publisher: THP Ireland
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781845888442
• eBook ISBN: 9780750960922
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: History of Education

In this important new work, the author analyses the contributions that our Ministers for Education made to the Irish education system between the years 1919 and 1999. Covering the social, economic and political realities of the time, and taking in the involvement of the OECD, what emerges is a picture of how Irish education was shaped and moulded over the course of the twentieth century.

1

The MacPherson Education Bill, 1919–20:
‘It means Irish education in foreign fetters’

On 14 November 1919, against a backdrop of the War of Independence,1 the British Government’s chief secretary in Ireland, James MacPherson, attempted to introduce the MacPherson Education Bill. It proposed radical administrative and structural reform of the education system for all of Ireland. The Bill provided, inter alia, for the setting up of a central department of education, the establishment of an advisory board, the setting up of LECs and the imposition of a local rate for education.

The proposals sparked off a lively campaign of opposition by the Catholic hierarchy, as the proposed new structures threatened their managerial role. Individual members of the hierarchy attacked the Bill, claiming that it posed a threat to the spiritual welfare of their flock, and that it could undermine their national identity. The most outspoken critic of the Bill was Dr Foley, Bishop of Kildare and Leiglin, who asked the people to resist ‘this latest brazen-faced attempt of a hostile government to impose on the mind and soul of an intensely devoted Catholic people, the deadly grip of the foreign fetters’.2 In fact the Bill was simply attempting to substitute one type of British administration system with another.

On 9 December 1919, a Statement of the Standing Committee of the Irish Bishops on the proposed Education Bill contended that ‘The only department which the vast majority of the Irish people will tolerate is one which shall be set up by its own Parliament’.3 The Catholic Clerical School Managers considered that ‘the only satisfactory education system for Catholics’ was one ‘wherein Catholic children are taught in Catholic schools by Catholic teachers, under Catholic control’.4

When the Education Bill was re-introduced in 1920, Cardinal Logue of Armagh issued a pastoral letter in which he called for a national solemn novena in honour of St Patrick ‘to avert from us the threatened calamity’, and he suggested that fathers of families should ‘assemble in the parish church … on Passion Sunday … to register their protests’.5

The Bishop of Kerry, Dr O’Sullivan displayed his displeasure at the INTO’s decision to support the Bill by forbidding a local school choir from participating in a welcoming reception for INTO delegates to their annual congress. The INTO reacted by transferring the congress from Killarney to Dublin on 6 April 1920.6

Dáil Éireann, which had been established on 21 January 1919, with Sinn Féin as the main governing party, refrained from public comment on the MacPherson Education Bill, but a short minute recorded by the Ministry for Irish on 4 March 1920 stated that ‘the Dáil will support the bishops in setting up and maintaining a national system of education’.7

The MacPherson Education Bill was withdrawn on 13 December 1920, a week before the Government of Ireland Act, which would partition Ireland, was passed into law, the latter Bill having been given priority.8 However, the intense controversy surrounding the MacPherson Education Bill acted as a salutary reminder to future Ministers for Education in Dáil Éireann that a heavy price would be exacted if they ever interfered with the administrative structures of Irish education, and if they posed a threat to the managerial system.

The meeting of the first Dáil of 1919 was a historic event in itself, but it was remarkable for another reason. No Minister for Education was appointed by the president of the Executive Council, Éamon de Valera, when constituting his ministries. According to Cathal Brugha,9 ‘President de Valera had some definite reason for not appointing a Minister for Ed’.10 One could conjecture that he hoped to avoid any involvement by the Dáil in public discussion on the contentious MacPherson Education Bill.

Responding to a resolution of the ard-fheis of the Gaelic League, a decision was taken by the Dáil in November 1919 to appoint a Minister for Irish. The Gaelic League was a powerful nineteenth-century language revival movement which had devised its own educational plans in 1918–19. It counted among its adherents and founding members future presidents, taoisigh and ministers for education. John J. O’Kelly, the president of the Gaelic League, was appointed Minister for Irish and his new role incorporated the duties of a Minister for Education. By August 1921, the threat posed by the MacPherson Education Bill had long vanished when de Valera sanctioned the appointment of O’Kelly (1872–57) as Ireland’s first Minister for Education.

Notes

    1  The War of Independence commenced on 21 January 1919, the day Dáil Éireann met for the first time. It lasted until 11 July 1921.

    2  T.J. McElligott, Secondary Education in Ireland 1870–1921 (Dublin, 1981), pp.134–5.

    3  Statement of the standing committee of the Irish bishops of the proposed education bill for Ireland in Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 14 (1919), pp.505–7.

    4  Evening Telegraph, 22 January 1920. The Catholic Clerical School Managers was founded in 1903 as the Clerical Managers of Catholic National Schools.

    5  T.J. O’Connell, History of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation 1868–1968 (Dublin, 1969), pp.318–20.

    6  Ibid., pp.327–8.

    7  Dáil Éireann Minutes of Aireacht na Gaedhilge 4 March, 1920.

    8  Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, vol. 138, col. 213, 13 December 1920.

    9  He was Acting President in the First Dáil, and later Minister of Defence.

  10  Dáil Éireann Minutes, 10 October 1919, Nollaig Ó Gadhra, An chéad Dáil 1919-1921 agus an Ghaeilge (Coiscéim, 1989), p.162.

2

John J. O’Kelly (1921–22):
‘… towards the Irishising of Primary Education’

John J. O’Kelly1 became Minister for Irish in very inauspicious circumstances. The War of Independence raged in the background and the Dáil had just been proscribed. His ministerial work had to be conducted mainly from his office in O’Connell Street, where he worked for a publishing firm. Furthermore, he had to substitute for the Speaker of the Dáil, while also fulfilling his duties as president of the Gaelic League. Despite his many commitments, and periods spent ‘on the run’ or in prison,2 O’Kelly, who was assisted by Frank Fahy, was a productive Minister. He applied himself to his ministerial roles as Minister for Irish from November 1919, and as Minister for Education from August 1921 until the signing of the peace Treaty in December, following which he withdrew from the Dáil in January 1922, along with the anti-Treaty Sinn Féin members.

As Minister for Irish, O’Kelly produced two important reports, one in June 1920 entitled ‘Report of Aireacht na Gaedhilge’3 and another in August 1921, the ‘Report of Ministry of the National Language’.4 It was clear from the 1920 report that O’Kelly used his position in the Gaelic League to channel its Education Programme 1918–195 into the Dáil education programme.

In schools where teachers were unable to teach Irish, travelling teachers were to be provided. A scholarship scheme was to be devised with a view to increasing the number of travelling teachers. The Gaelic League offered eight annual scholarships to the total value of £100 to the Irish College in Dublin for the month of August. The Ministry for Irish recommended that the Dáil should sponsor a similar scheme, and finance a further eight scholarships to the value of £50 each to a preparatory training college for eight Gaeltacht residents, ‘as a practical step towards the Irishising of Primary Education’.6 Some of these ideas were to form the basis of an experimental system of preparatory colleges which were set up by the Ministry for Irish in 19207 in order to recruit native Irish speakers to primary teaching. The experiment failed, and a further attempt w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Glossary of Irish Terms
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The MacPherson Education Bill, 1919–20: ‘It means Irish education in foreign fetters’
• 2. John J. O’Kelly (1921–22): ‘… towards the Irishising of Primary Education’
• 3. Michael Hayes and Finian Lynch (1922): ‘to teach the teachers Irish overnight’
• 4. Eoin MacNeill (1922–25): ‘… wholly detached from practical affairs, living in the air as it were’
• 5. John Marcus O’Sullivan (1926–32): ‘the policy of raising the standard of education has never been tried’
• 6. Thomas Derrig (1932–39; 1940–48): ‘Our system of education approaches the ideal’
• 7. Richard Mulcahy (1948–51): ‘I think the function of the Minister for Education is a very, very narrow one’
• 8. Seán Moylan (1951–54): ‘I do not agree with this idea of equal opportunities for all’
• 9. Richard Mulcahy (1954–57): ‘I was in the Department of Education for two periods of office and I ask myself, what did I do there?’
• 10. Jack Lynch (1957–59): ‘Vocational schools are being turned into educational dustbins’
• 11. Patrick J. Hillery (1959–65): ‘The Modern Third Estate’
• 12. George Colley (1965–66): ‘If that is so, why could not His Lordship use the courts to test his point?’
• 13. Donogh O’Malley (1966–68): ‘This is a dark stain on the national conscience’
• 14. Brian Lenihan (1968–69): ‘This was more than a strike of the teachers: it was a revolt of the schools’
• 15. Pádraig Faulkner (1969–73): ‘The grand design of the community schools, the National Blueprint, was as dead as a pork chop’
• 16. Richard Burke (1973–76): ‘The Minister broke the top rung of the ladder’
• 17. John P. Wilson (1977–81): ‘A landmark settlement and a significant victory for the teachers’
• 18. John Boland (1981–82): ‘A majority of the general public agreed with him’
• 19. Gemma Hussey (1982–86): ‘We asked for bread, the bread of resources for our schools and she has offered us a stone, the stone of regionalisation’
• 20. Mary O’Rourke (1987–91): ‘Curriculum reform was one of my main priorities’
• 21. Séamus Brennan (1992–93): ‘One can only hope that a recovery of nerve will take place before the Green Paper turns white’
• 22. Niamh Bhreathnach (1993–97): ‘The most significant piece of university legislation since the State was founded’
• 23. Micheál Martin (1997–2000): ‘Today’s one right way is tomorrow’s obsolete policy’
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Copyright