‘[An] historic culture … rapidly, universally, and thoroughly restored’? British influence on Irish education since 1922

Abstract

This piece concerns the relationship between Ireland and the United Kingdom over the course of some 170–180 years from the early/mid‐1800s to the present. It is argued that, despite the expectations of nationalists such as Timothy Corcoran, writing in the immediate aftermath of independence, to whom it seemed both desirable and inevitable that Ireland ‘historic [educational] culture’ would be ‘rapidly, universally, and thoroughly restored’, the tendency for educational homogenisation present prior to independence has been continued, and even exacerbated, since. It is suggested that a ‘post‐colonial overhang’ affects Irish policy‐makers and bureaucrats in their educational policies and practices.

Notes

1. Corcoran was a Catholic priest and a member of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits).

2. Corcoran has been described as, ‘the single most important individual impetus behind the Gaelicising of… [post‐independence Irish] schools’. (Kelly 2002, 10).

3. Strictly, Ireland was, from c1170, a possession of the Norman/English crown; to some extent it was a British colony from 1707 and, de jure, part of the UK after 1800. Although it is common to do so, I have striven to avoid eliding England/Britain/United Kingdom [UK]. For further discussion, see: Wellings 2002; Cohen 2003.

4. Defining the scope of the British empire is all the more difficult in that it evolved in fits and starts and comprised overlapping legal entities: the ‘first empire’ (in north America), the Indian empire, the colonial empire (primarily in Africa and Asia), the self‐governing dominions and the mandate territories (after the Second World War).

5. Here, Ireland’s enduring relationship with another once mighty empire, the Catholic Church, is rather more at issue.

6. It may not be unreasonable to suggest that, in part, this can be attributed to lingering British ‘postcolonial guilt’ prompting a desire to identify with the Irish as ‘victims’ of oppression.

7. On the subject of language, I should add that the Irish state body known previously, successively as the Department of Education and the Department of Education and Science was renamed in 2010, making it the Department of Education and Skills, both changes reflecting new language previously adopted in the UK. The superficial difference implied by having Irish names for schools and types of schools is just that: superficial and the ‘real story’ is told by the tendency to follow UK nomenclature, as revealed in the decisions to adopt the fashionable ‘and Science’ or ‘and Skills’ addenda.

8. VECs control community colleges but not comprehensive/community schools. All are effectively secular, heterogeneous and non‐selective.

9. An equivalent to the NC was enacted in Northern Ireland [NI] under the Education Reform (NI) Order, 1988. Although NI remained part of the UK after 1922 I assume throughout that, for obvious political/cultural reasons, the external influence comes from or through Britain, or, more specifically, England, but not NI. Although much the same arrangements apply in Wales as in England, different curricular structures and assumptions operate in Scotland. The degree of central prescription involved in the operation of the literacy/numeracy strategies was reduced in 2009 but the prediction of any future change[s] has been made difficult by the UK’s election of a Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition in 2010.

10. Here, I do not suggest a simple or purely linear relationship of cause/effect because Ireland, as any country must, exists in a sea or soup of global discourse, ‘the global discourse is where the reforms [in a country]… are influenced by international trends and, as a result, the national discourse on education is sufficiently influenced to bring about educational reform’ (Griffin 2002, 15). Policy discourses ‘come at’ any country from many directions at once and are multivalent and complex in nature. Some development, such as the ‘Plowdenite’ reforms of the 1960s and 1970s and those associated with neoliberalism more recently, are patently not reducible to any one source. It is a tendency to borrow/transfer policies via Britain that is at issue.