A retrospective and prospective look at the ‘happy English child’1

1. The phrase ‘happy English child’ is contained in a verse of a poem from the Third Book of Lessons (1835), which was a textbook in use in the national schools of the time. It was controversially retained by the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, and National Board member, Dr Whateley, in his revised edition of the text in 1846. See Antonia McManus, The Irish Hedge School andIts Books, 1695–1831 (Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2002), p. 230. The text of the verse reads:

I thank the goodness and the grace

That on my birth have smiled,

And made me in these Christian days,

A happy English child

—the applicability of postcolonial theory to the British government's education policy in Ireland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Abstract

This paper looks at traditional nationalist and revisionist schools of historiography in relation to the British government's educational policy in Ireland following the establishment of the national school system in 1831 until the beginning of the twentieth century. It contrasts this with the postcolonial historiographical approach. It also looks at concepts of ‘internal colonialisation’ and the concept of the ‘celtic fringe’. It relates these various approaches particularly to the effect of the government's educational policy on the position of the Irish language at that time.

Notes

1. The phrase ‘happy English child’ is contained in a verse of a poem from the Third Book of Lessons (1835), which was a textbook in use in the national schools of the time. It was controversially retained by the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, and National Board member, Dr Whateley, in his revised edition of the text in 1846. See Antonia McManus, The Irish Hedge School and Its Books, 1695–1831 (Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2002), p. 230. The text of the verse reads:

I thank the goodness and the grace

That on my birth have smiled,

And made me in these Christian days,

A happy English child