The Catholic Church and the Secondary School Curriculum in Ireland, 1922–1962 (review)

The Catholic Church and the Secondary School Curriculum in Ireland, 1922-1962. By Thomas A. O'Donoghue. [Irish Studies, Vol. 5.] (New York: Peter Lang. 1999. Pp. ix, 183. $44.95.)

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Ireland, the bishops of the Catholic Church had reached an accord with Irish government officials wherein the Church was assured it would control publicly-funded primary schools that were under clerical management. Irish nationalist politicians supported the Church's rights in this arrangement, which was at the center of the de facto constitution of the modern Irish state as it evolved before the War of Independence (1919-1921) and the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. When Ireland was partitioned, the population in the Free State (later Éire, then the Republic of Ireland) was over ninety per cent Catholic. A post-revolutionary government was in place, determined to consolidate the political revolution and use the schools to press forward a cultural revolution aimed at recovering the nation's rich Gaelic tradition. Thomas O'Donoghue explores how the Church easily maintained and strengthened its grip on its schools, particularly the secondary schools, during the first four decades of an independent Ireland.

The Church's principal concern was the salvation of souls, and the bishops and clergy saw control of all aspects of the education of Irish Catholic youth as being essential to that task. Religion permeated the school day; instruction in the faith infused the teaching of secular subjects. The secondary (and primary) curriculum was revised by including required courses in Irish history and literature and the native language; but the Church protected the place in the curriculum of the classics and of Latin and Greek, deemed important for the recruiting of new priests. Agreements with triumphal new education ministers who were raised on the principles of the Gaelic League resulted in fewer courses on offer, a narrow curriculum delivered through stultifying, test-driven teaching methods that rewarded mimetic skills over more transformative, critical thinking. Vocational education was left largely to evening schools and to a few technical schools. Students who ended their formal education after attending secondary schools were destined for clerical positions in banks, commerce, and the civil service. By the 1930's, O'Donoghue concludes, "the Church would sanction no changes of a management or curricular nature that possibly threatened the status quo in secondary education. De Valera [prime minister after 1932], accordingly, ordered that education policy should never have the potential to create Church-State conflict, realising that it would be political suicide to do otherwise. A culture emerged where successive Ministers of Education saw themselves only as caretakers" (p. 120). Frugal, cash-starved Irish governments were content to leave the provision of secondary schools to the Church, which invested in school plant although older facilities faded over time. The number of secondary schools nearly doubled; but in 1960 pupils enrolled in secondary schools represented only sixteen per cent of those enrolled in the primary schools. At that point it was apparent to Irish political leaders that a modern, more urban state would need to reconsider its entire approach to education.

O'Donoghue's narrative moves very quickly, deploying strategically a combination of primary and secondary sources: the bibliography is twenty pages, nearly as long as the individual chapters. He is at his best, however, in the concluding chapter that places the Church's activities regarding schooling within the multiple contexts of self-interest, a rural and middle-class Catholic social ethos, and conservative nationalism. Between 1922 and 1962, the Church, the state, and the nation each obtained what they wanted in terms of schooling from the other.

Lawrence W. McBride
Illinois State University

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