Irish Education in 1909
Education in Ireland, when it ceased to be a violent political attack on the spirit of the people, did so in order to take on, not the fair colours of…
From: 1909 C.E. To: 1909 C.E.
Location: Ireland
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Home Life in Ireland by Robert Lynd, 1909.
Irish Education
Education in Ireland, when it ceased to be a violent political attack on the spirit of the people, did so in order to take on, not the fair colours of nationality, but a kind of dull negative hue.
The training-colleges, through which the teachers have to pass for want of a university education, do nothing to encourage the knowledge and spirit of Ireland in those whose duty it will one day be to capture the imaginations and shape the minds of Irish children.
Consequently, manned by teachers without any national knowledge, the schools have always been great breeding-grounds for boy clerkships in the British Civil Service. The child has never been trained at school to live in an Irish home, to work on an Irish farm or in an Irish shop. If he has shown any signs of ability, he has generally been taught to despise Ireland as a sphere of labour for so promising a genius, and to set his heart on some Government position, the salary of which seems princely to him in his narrow home.
Too many fresh-faced boys have been wasted on these London clerkships to allow such dreams of wealth to mislead the people permanently, and both teachers and parents are beginning to know that a boy clerk's wage in London is not a living wage, and that, poor as it is, it may be brought to a sudden end in three or four years. Consequently, fewer Irish children are now sent over to London with their incipient brains than used to be. Still, the bad tradition of teaching remains, and the Irish boy and girl are for the most part even now educated on the supposition that they have not a country of their own, but will one day emigrate. One of the arguments used against the revival of the Irish language was: “What use will it be to anybody outside Ireland?"
As though every language did not first grow up, not because it was suited for use in foreign countries, but because it was suited for use in the country in which it was native and vital.
I myself, who was brought up in a district rich in history and in heroic tales, was never allowed to know at school a single human fact suggesting that this country around me and I had any relation to each other—or even, indeed, that this country existed, except in the geographical sense. Cuchullain, the hero of Ulster, is to my mind one of the great figures in the world's imaginative literature. His story is as wonderful and varied as the story of Achilles, a thousand times more wonderful and varied than the story of Hercules.
Yet I, living in the capital of Ulster, was taught my fair share about Achilles and Hercules, but heard never a word about Cuchullain. Near my father's house were mounds that had once been the dwelling places of Cuchullain's companions, the Knights of the Red Branch, but my father had been told nothing about these places, and so he could communicate none of their mystery to me. I say that it is an evil thing to let all this beauty, beauty of memory and imagination, go to waste and not use it to enrich the lives of Irish children.
History, again, meant to me, just as literature did, something about anywhere except Ireland. We had the flaming youth of Red Hugh O'Donnell at our doors, and the humours and heroisms of the O'Neills, and the passionate drama of Wolfe Tone, and the passionate sacrifice of Henry Joy McCracken. Never, however, during all my schooldays do I remember hearing a single intelligent fact stated in regard to any of these men or anybody like them.
I do not blame my teachers. They, too, were brought up in a system which aimed at educating Irish boys and girls largely by ignoring their own country. Some of them were unsurpassed teachers on their own lines, but they never realised that the object of Irish education ought to be to produce a race of men and women who would be useful and many sided citizens of Ireland.
It may be argued that Irish education is no worse-off than English in this respect, and that the English schools lay very little stress on history. The case is different, however. The English child, at least, is not taught to ignore Waterloo and Trafalgar and the Armada as though they were shameful things. He is brought up in the idea that his is a country to be proud of. The trend of Irish education, on the other hand, is largely—or was until the day before yesterday—to convince a child that his is a country of which to be ashamed.
Sir Horace Plunkett has put the case in regard to this aspect of Irish education so well that I shall quote a few of his sentences and so anticipate the many people who in all honesty and innocence will accuse me of exaggeration. "The national factor in Ireland," he writes in "Ireland in the New Century," "has been studiously eliminated from national education, and Ireland is perhaps the only country in Europe where it was part of the settled policy of those who had the guidance of education to ignore the literature, history, arts, and tradition of the people.
It was a fatal policy, for it obviously tended to stamp their native country in the eyes of Irishmen with the badge of inferiority and to extinguish the sense of healthy self-respect which comes from the consciousness of high national ancestry and traditions. This policy, rigidly adhered to for many years, almost extinguished native culture among Irishmen, but it did not succeed in making another form of culture acceptable to them. It chilled the intelligence of the people, impaired their interest in their own surroundings, stimulated emigration by teaching them to look on other countries as more agreeable places to live in, and made Ireland almost a social desert.
Men and women without culture or knowledge of literature or of music have succeeded a former generation who were passionately interested in these things, an interest which extended down even to the wayside cabin."
Robert Lynd, Home Life in Ireland (London: Mills, & Boon, 1909)
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