Abstract
The discussion presented here forms part of a wider study into the history of teaching in Ireland primarily employing oral testimony from one-to-one interviews with retired teachers. This chapter is based upon recollections discovered in archive collections, teaching memoirs and the oral testimony of 29 retired post-primary teachers [hereafter, respondents] that took place between 2010 and 2013. Five respondents acted as school principals; one as a deputy principal, two as former presidents of the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland and two were former Ministers of Education and all were self-selecting. The oldest respondent [Sister Boniface] began teaching in 1943. All contributed under anonymity and are allocated pseudonyms with the exception of Niamh Breathnach and Mary Hanafin who spoke as former holders of the office of Minster for Education, the latter also contributing as a former secondary school teacher. Some of the respondents worked in more than one type of school during their career, 17 % in Community Schools and the remainder in denominationally operated schools under Religious or lay management.
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Notes
- 1.
Community schools aim to provide a comprehensive curriculum, combining traditional academic and technical/vocational education. They also provide adult education. They are publically owned, operated by boards of management and wholly stated-funded. The Association of Community and Comprehensive Schools (ACCS) is the representative body for this sector.
- 2.
Compiled using Annual Reports, Department of Education, Dublin.
- 3.
Beatrice, interviewed June 24, 2011.
- 4.
Interviewed April 13, 2011.
- 5.
Interviewed April 17, 2011.
- 6.
Interviewed May 4, 2012. Elements of Deirdre’s experiences were firmly located in specific historic periods. For example, the ‘maiden lady’ who operated this small school was the daughter of a Protestant missionary who had been murdered by ‘bandits’ on the Yangtze River in China. Her mother and siblings lost their lives when shipwrecked on the voyage home to Ireland.
- 7.
Interviewed June 2, 2009.
- 8.
On being invited to give a presentation to a group of active retired (April, 2012), I were told by one attendee that he was one of 72 pupils taught by one teacher in a national school in the 1950s.
- 9.
M.G. Parker in B. Bowden, 200 Years of a Future Through Education (Dublin, 1992) 95.
- 10.
Stephen Gwynn, Nationalist MP for Galway 1906–1918, Anglo-Irish writer.
- 11.
‘Croc’ was schoolgirl slang for crocodile; the shape of their formation as they walked in pairs. It appears regularly in the literature where girls attended boarding schools. Another respondent began teaching in a ‘small co-educational Protestant day school’ in 1960 and recalls ‘a swimming pool in the school garden; there was a tennis court and cricket was played on the lawns—quite a little up-market school it was in those days’. By email May 18, 2012.
- 12.
On Alexandra College and the entrance of women to university, see A. O. Connor and S. Parkes, Gladly Learn and Gladly Teach, passim and J. Harford, The Opening of University Education to Women in Ireland (Dublin 2008), ch. 3. The Royal University of Ireland was established in 1879 as an examining and award granting body only. It was dissolved with the passing of the Irish Universities Act 1908.
- 13.
Deirdre failed Irish in the Intermediate Examination, thereby failing to secure the Intermediate Certificate.
- 14.
Sister Genevieve, O. P. (Ann Mooney), ‘Cabra Days’, in O. Burns and M. Wilson (Eds.), Dominican Sisters Cabra 1819–1994 (Dublin, 1995), 22.
- 15.
Ibid.
- 16.
‘School Days in Cabra Recalled 1936–1940’, ibid., 23. The tendency of generations to attend the same school is repeatedly highlighted in school yearbooks and archives. The history of Mount Sackville School, Dublin, records that Mary and Elizabeth Glennon attended the school in the 1880s (a photograph survives) and that ‘one hundred years later’ their ‘great grand-nieces’ Carina and Mairead also attended Mt. Sackville. See M. Delaney, Mount Sackville 1864–2004 (Dublin, 2004), 38. Annette Andrews, who enrolled there in 1950, recorded that ‘my mother, her sisters and brother had been there before me’. Ibid., 60.
- 17.
Ibid., 24. The girls were allowed extra sleep, known as ‘sleeps’, as a ‘reward for particularly good behaviour or if Sister thought a girl looked very tired’.
- 18.
Ibid. The pupils bathed weekly.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Ibid., 26. No further information is given as this information is reproduced from the School Yearbook 1957–1962. It also includes information concerning everyday events including a magic show by Fr. Aengus Buckley O.P. in September 1957, in which he ‘produced’ a ‘real goose from a few handkerchiefs’. Ibid., 27. The Yearbook demonstrates that, like others, this school provided its pupils with a range of activities and events, many set around religious feast days and events but providing, nonetheless, occasions for communal celebration and recreation. Sister Marie de Lourdes attended Mount Sackville School in the 1940s and recalled ‘evening recreation’ being ‘usually ballroom dancing’. See M. Delaney, Mount Sackville, 56.
- 22.
The IER was published in 1965 and initiated in 1962 by the Department of Education in co-operation with the OECD, described by Irish Times in 1964 as ‘the most comprehensive document of its kind ever produced in this country’. See ‘End-of-year report on education’, Irish Times October 27, 1964.
- 23.
The Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, commonly known as the Loreto Order, founded by Mary Ward in 1609.
- 24.
Nano Nagle founded the Institute of the Charitable Instruction of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Presentation Sisters) in 1775, in Cork, Ireland.
- 25.
See E. Edwards, Women in Teacher Training Colleges, 1900–1960: A Culture of Femininity (London and New York 2001), 129. See also D. Copelman, London’s Women Teachers (London and New York, 1996), 24.
- 26.
C. O’Brien, ‘Days without Wine and Roses’, in J. Bowman and R. O’Donoghue, Portraits: Belvedere College, Dublin 1832–1982 (Dublin 1982), 116.
- 27.
‘Acting the maggot’; colloquialism for misbehaviour.
- 28.
Interviewed 23.10.2010.
- 29.
Interviewed 20.4.2011. The Marist Order was founded by Claude Colin in France, in 1836, for the purpose of education and missionary work.
- 30.
Emphasis by interviewee. [Note: all emphases by interviewee unless stated otherwise.]
- 31.
Interviewed 8.3.2013.
- 32.
M. Dineen (Ed.) One Woman (Ireland, 2011), 82, 98.
- 33.
When asked about corporal punishment in school, Margery was emphatic that it did not exist in her secondary school, repeating ‘no’ eight times. However, Margo recalls of primary school, ‘normally they [the nuns] had these special belts and they strapped you with that’ (i.e., the leather waist belt worn on their habit); ‘it was very sore…they’d give you three belts with that’. Sister R recalls corporal punishment being administered in her primary school in the 1920s, although she ‘never got it!’ The former Minister for Education Niamh Bhreathnach commented in relation to schooling in the 1980s, ‘we knew what happened in boys’ schools, you see girls weren’t hit’. Interviewed May 27, 2011.
- 34.
By email, May 18, 2012.
- 35.
Interviewed February 16, 2012. Edmund Rice established the Congregation of the Christian Brothers in 1802. The Congregation operated single-sex primary and secondary schools.
- 36.
Here, Karl uses the term ‘movement’ to denote the events of 1916 and 1922 and the emphasis, in particular, upon the rejuvenation of the Irish language after independence.
- 37.
‘Cogg’ and ‘ekker’ are Dublin slang for copy and homework, respectively; to ‘cog ekker’ is to copy a peer’s homework and present it as one’s own. Karl was from a middle-class, professional background. His relating how he copied a fellow pupil’s work in ‘a tenement in Dorset Street’, a traditionally working-class area of inner-city Dublin, draws attention to the social mix of the school.
- 38.
The Secondary Teacher, 1985 Vol. 14, No 4, 25. Colgan retired in 1977. ‘Messers’ and ‘smart alecs’: respectively, colloquialisms for mischievousness and cheekiness or impertinence.
- 39.
Interviewed June 24, 2011. On the Irish language and schools, see B. Walsh, Boy Republic: Patrick Pearse and Radical Education (Dublin, 2013), ch. 3.
- 40.
Sister M. Condon, O.P., ‘Cabra Revisited’, in Burns and Wilson, Dominican Sisters, 21. They were ‘Miss Kelleher, Miss Carmody, Mrs. O’Keefe, Miss Liston and Miss Ryan’. On the extent and distribution of lay/religious teachers at the period see P. Duffy, The Lay Teacher (Dublin 1965), passim.
- 41.
Ibid. See also M. Kelly, ‘Plus Ça Change, Plus C’est Different’, in Burns and Wilson, Dominican Sisters, 38.
- 42.
Interviewed October 16, 2011.
- 43.
On employment opportunities for women in Ireland in the 1930s–1950s, see E. Kiely and M. Leane, Irish Women at Work 1930–1960: An Oral History (Dublin, 2012), 20–22.
- 44.
By email May 2, 2012.
- 45.
The Congregation of the Holy Spirit (now Spiritans) founded by Claude Poullart des Places in Paris, 1703.
- 46.
Minister for Education 1993–1997, interviewed May 23, 2011.
- 47.
‘Points’ were introduced by the universities in 1968 in order to select candidates for disciplines where numbers were restricted. School subjects were awarded points and candidates had to secure the number required for entry to the desired degree. Their introduction had the effect of making the Leaving Certificate more competitive. See J. Coolahan, Irish Education: History and Structure (Dublin, 1984), 199.
- 48.
Interviewed March 2, 2011.
- 49.
Interviewee Mary.
- 50.
Margaret Kelly, ‘Plus Ça Change, Plus C’est Different’ in Burns and Wilson, Dominican Sisters, 37.
- 51.
Interviewed December 13, 2010.
- 52.
‘St. Dominic’s College as I Remember it when I was a Pupil’, Burns and Wilson, Dominican Sisters, 35. The Leaving Certificate was established in 1924 and is a terminal examination taken by pupils on exiting post-primary school. Results obtained in this examination generally form the basis of entry to further education and training courses.
- 53.
School Children’s Protection Agency, Punishment in Schools, 4. On being ridiculed, see J. Collins, Tales Out of School (Dublin, 2010), 161–162.
- 54.
B. MacMahon, The Master (Dublin 1992), 11.
- 55.
School Children’s Protection Agency, Punishment in Schools, 5.
- 56.
‘Seeking abolition of corporal punishment’, Irish Times, February 25, 1969.
- 57.
School Children’s Protection Agency, Punishment in Schools, 5.
- 58.
Ibid., 21–2.
- 59.
Collins, Tales Out of School, 11.
- 60.
Ibid., 13.
- 61.
Ibid., 21.
- 62.
Ibid., 29.
- 63.
Ibid., 36.
- 64.
Ibid., 147–8.
- 65.
Ibid., 161.
- 66.
Rinehart records an incident where a pupil, later a teacher, corrected a teacher’s pronunciation and was made to ‘stay after school’. See Mortals in an Immortal Profession (NY, 1983), 72.
- 67.
G.K. White, The Last Word (Dublin 1977), 94.
- 68.
Interviewed March 22, 2013.
- 69.
Interviewed April 11, 2013.
- 70.
The author attended a Christian Brothers’ national school between 1972 and 1979 where both Religious and lay teachers employed corporal punishment. Punishment could also take the form of hair-pulling, slapping on the face or head along with the more common use of leather strap or stick across the hand. Corporal punishment was discontinued in Irish schools in 1982.
- 71.
J. Bennett and R. Forgan, Convent Girls (UK, 2003), 108.
- 72.
Ibid., 105.
- 73.
Interviewee Margo.
- 74.
Interviewee Margo.
- 75.
Interviewed 30.4.2013.
- 76.
Interviewed 11.4.2013.
- 77.
Cited in, T. O’Donoghue and A. Potts, ‘Researching the lives of Catholic teachers who were members of religious orders: historiographical considerations’, History of Education, 2004, vol. 33, issue, 4, 481.
- 78.
Imelda Tucker enrolled in Muckross College, Dublin, in 1936 and remembered ‘the nuns’ who ‘even then, encouraged an interactive exchange of ideas and an independent streak in their pupils’, ‘Muckross Park in the late 30s and early 40s’, Muckross Mail, April 2000. Hilary Clancy attended the same school between 1952 and 1958 and in 2007 recalled Sister Patrick, who devoted the first part of her lessons to instruction and the second to discussion of ‘newspaper articles, music, boys, movies, world affairs, social and family issues, even death’ and ‘supported me through one of my first big feminist struggles’, ‘Educator and nun: no nun like Sister Patrick’, Ibid., 2007, 5–6.
- 79.
The recurring emphasis on teacher qualifications in early school prospectuses implicitly indicates their rarity. A draft letter to the press, in the archives of Dominican Santa Sabina school (founded in 1912), notes that ‘several members of the Community have taken out Diplomas for Teaching both in Theory and Practice in the Cambridge University [sic], and have gone through a complete course of training at Bedford College, London’. Dominican Archives, Cabra, Dublin, OPG/SSS/F 005.
- 80.
By ‘educated in Loreto’, Sister R means by the Loreto Sisters.
- 81.
Mary’s emphasis. Mary also had a lay teacher in primary school but not until fifth class, c. 1957/58.
- 82.
The formality of schooling during this period permeates the literature also. Rinehart records a past pupil’s typical recollections of elementary schooling in America: ‘The relationship between teachers and students was very distant. You didn’t become friendly’. Mortals in an Immortal Profession, 72.
- 83.
Interviewee Margery.
- 84.
Interviewee Margery.
- 85.
Interviewed June 7, 2011.
- 86.
Tony Gibson remarks, ‘teachers are usually products of a system designed to promote academic success, and for the most part they look back appreciatively at the techniques which were made to work successfully for them’. Teachers Talking (UK, 1973), 29.
- 87.
Collins, Tales Out of School, 92.
- 88.
Ibid., 110.
- 89.
Ibid., 133.
- 90.
Ibid., 139.
- 91.
Ibid., 163.
- 92.
Ibid., 82.
- 93.
White, The Last Word, 127. B. Goldrey has argued that the harsh punishment administered by the Christian Brothers, in particular, was common among working-class parents in the period and is more abhorrent to modern sensibilities than it would have been to those of the mid-nineteenth century. See B. Goldrey, ‘“A most unenviable reputation”: over two centuries’, History of Education, 1992, vol. 21, no. 3, passim.
- 94.
‘St. Pats’ is St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra (established 1875), a training college for primary teachers. See J. Kelly (Ed.), St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra: A History (Dublin, 2004), passim.
- 95.
The Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy founded by Catherine McAuley in 1831 in Dublin, Ireland.
- 96.
J. Quinn, My Education (Dublin 1997), 78.
- 97.
Ibid., 91.
- 98.
Ibid., 119. Garret FitzGerald (1926–2011), Irish Taoiseach on two occasions and Chancellor of the National University of Ireland from 1997 to 2009.
- 99.
Ibid., 127.
- 100.
Ibid., 172. Seamus Heaney (1939–2013), poet and playwright.
- 101.
Ibid., 185.
- 102.
Ibid., 190.
- 103.
Ibid., 197. John Hume (b. 1937) politician.
- 104.
Ibid., 222. Brendan Kennelly (b. 1936), poet and academic.
- 105.
Ibid., 247. Patrick Lynch (1917–2001), influential Irish economist and Professor of Political Economy at University College Dublin until 1980.
- 106.
Ibid.
- 107.
Ibid., 258. John McGahern, (1934–2006).
- 108.
Ibid., 268. Thomas Patrick McKenna, (1929–2011).
- 109.
Ibid., 304–305.
- 110.
Ibid., 382–383. Ken Whittaker (b. 1915) played a key role as economic expert and civil servant in the rehabilitation of Ireland’s economy during the 1960s.
- 111.
R. Quinn, Straight Left: A Journey in Politics (Ireland, 2005), 25.
- 112.
P. Cunningham and P. Gardner, Becoming Teachers (UK, 2004), 121.
- 113.
Ibid., 122.
- 114.
Ibid., 123.
- 115.
R. W. Connell, Teachers’ Work (UK, 1985), 125.
- 116.
Ibid., 158.
- 117.
See J. Nias, Primary Teachers Talking (London 1989), 137; P. Sikes et al., Teacher Careers: Crises and Continuities (UK, 1985) 44, 45, 54, 135; Cunningham and Gardner, Becoming Teachers, 121, 119, 135, 161; A.D. Rinehart, Mortals in an Immortal Profession, 67, 106.
- 118.
A.D. Rinehart, Mortals in an Immortal Profession, 20–22; P. Sikes et al., Teacher Careers: Crises and Continuities, 26.
- 119.
R.W. Connell, Teachers’ Work, 159.
- 120.
Margery’s paternal and maternal uncles were teachers, as were a number of her cousins, at both primary and secondary level.
- 121.
It was usual at the time (1950s) for national/primary schools to have a seventh class. As most children did not proceed to post-primary school, pupils destined for this (often preparing for scholarship examinations), or perhaps for ‘white-collar’ employment, would complete an extra year at school.
- 122.
Jack Mahon’s memoirs recall one of his first teaching jobs in Enniskillen where most of the boys were ‘not Catholics and they resented me. Some of them were members of the B Specials. They knew I was a Galway footballer and my Pioneer Pin didn’t help endear me to them’. J. Mahon, Only the Teachers Grow Old, (Cork, 1992), 16. Pioneer Pin; small metal badge signifying that the wearer abstains from alcohol. Writing about her neighbours’ children in her memoir A Belfast Woman, Mary Beckett noted that ‘one got to be a teacher; another was in the Post Office which is about as far as a clever poor Catholic can get’, 90.
- 123.
One of these was a ‘JAM’ (Junior Assistant Mistress), i.e., without qualifications; but Denise remembers her as ‘a super teacher’.
- 124.
That Was Then, This is Now: change in Ireland, 1949–1999 (Dublin, 2000), 45.
- 125.
On contemporaneous attitudes to vocational education see J. Gray, Poverty and the Life Cycle in 20th Century Ireland: Changing Experiences of Childhood, Education and the Transition to Adulthood (Combat Poverty Agency, Working Paper Series 10/04, 2010), 30–31.
- 126.
D. Buckley, ‘Education: Rights and Responsibilities’, The Secondary Teacher, Vol. 2, No. 1. January 1967, 9.
- 127.
Gray, Poverty and the Life Cycle in 20th Century Ireland, 31.
- 128.
See, M. McSharry and B. Walsh, Fostering Complicit Femininity: Epoch, Education and the Young Female Body in P. Kelly and A. Kamp (Eds.), A Critical Youth Studies for the 21st Century (Leiden, 2014).
- 129.
See, for example, School Echoes, No. 10, 1962. Dominican College, Muckross Park, Dublin. School archives [not catalogued].
- 130.
Report of the Sub Committee for Girl Guiding: Report of Meeting of Convent Secondary Schools in Ireland, 8.10.1930. Dominican Archives, Cabra, Dublin, Folder OPG/SSS/F, 008-F, 029.
- 131.
Irish Times, July 5, 1879. On Investment in Education and the Human Capital Paradigm, see A. Loxley, A. Seery & J. Walsh, ‘Investment in Education and the tests of time’, Irish Educational Studies, 33.2, June 2014, 177.
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Walsh, B. (2016). Teachers’ Experience of School: First-hand Accounts, 1943–1965. In: Walsh, B. (eds) Essays in the History of Irish Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51482-0_8
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