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Abstract
This article looks at the Intermediate Certificate examination on Irish history between 1926 and 1968. An investigation on how the official syllabus was examined is of equal merit, if not more important than the syllabus itself, being used as the official marker of a pupil’s aptitude and awareness of Irish history. Furthermore, examination papers are a massively underused historical source, and a further lens through which to gauge the official ideology regarding the history of the Irish nation. By conducting a longitudinal study of how Irish History was engaged with at the Intermediate Certificate level and importantly at what aspects were stressed by the state through the examination papers set, it is possible to glean not only what is generally seen as important but also what issues, themes, or events were repeatedly stressed and therefore seen as the defining issues in the course of Irish history. This article looks at Intermediate History, as unlike Leaving Certificate History, with its increased specialisation, the Intermediate course throughout the period comprised of an overview of Irish history and as such can provide a sense of which aspects of this long storied history were chosen to be recalled, and in what manner. It also focuses on the Intermediate Certificate, due to the low rate of progression beyond this level. Ultimately, this article finds that while certain topics did dominate, as has been noted by others, only a select few events or personalities were universally seen as important across the period. Various aspects of Irish history were of more or of less importance depending on the context. Notwithstanding, an overall narrative can still be gleaned, which focussed on the Physical Force tradition as well as the promotion of Ireland as its own Gaelic nation.
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Notes
1 Memories of Noel Kelly, Mount Sion CBS, reflecting on his own time in education.
2 This remained so until 1992, when the Intermediate Certificate (and the Vocational ‘Group Certificate’) was replaced by the Junior Certificate, which is in operation to this day.
3 These Rules and Programmes were published annually up until 2004.
4 Daly’s work challenged this consensus that Ireland experienced dramatic ‘modernisation’ during the 1960s.
5 Corcoran is widely accepted as being crucial to formulating educational policy in the new Irish Free State (Cunningham Citation2010, 60–61).
6 This is highlighted in the archival files of the ASTI. While the ASTI had stated a reluctance to ask, on the rare occasion that they did, their requests were not typically granted by the Department of Education. Note the call for sample Leaving Certificate papers for the revised 1941–1942 syllabus (ASTI 1942a, 23; ASTI 1933b). This decision, which became union policy, contravened earlier calls, in 1927 and 1928, which called for the Department to ‘draw up detailed and specific programmes’.
7 Specifically, ‘Section X-Council of Education: Replies from the Association of Secondary Teachers to questionnaire from Council of Education, March, 1956’.
8 In 1942–1943, for instance, there were 39,787 students enrolled in secondary schools. Of these 30,076 followed the Intermediate Certificate Course and 9461 followed the Leaving Certificate course of study.
9 In this year, ‘Free’ secondary education was announced (to begin the following September) by Minister for Education Donogh O’Malley. This led to a dramatic increase in figures in subsequent years.
10 Figures compiled from the annual statistical report of the Department of Education (Dublin, 1928–1973).
11 The ‘Emergency’ generally refers to the years covered by the ‘Emergency Powers Act’ from 1939 to 1946, corresponding with Ireland’s response to the Second World War and beyond.
12 This reduction was also applied to the study of European History from 987 A.D.
13 ASTI (1928a, 19), ‘Education Sub-Committee Report’ 1 November 1927, ‘The Sub-Committee feels that the courses in History are much too wide and that the standard and scope of the questions set in recent examinations is extreme, involving much too wide a knowledge’ (further examples include ASTI 1932a, 20).
14 The year 1949 was given further weight by Secondary School teachers themselves, when discussing the proposed revision of the Intermediate course. As stated at the ASTI History Sub-Committee meeting held 25 May 1965: ‘The additional topics for study in the Irish History Course were unanimously approved. It was however, suggested … that the date 1949 should mark the end of the course instead of 1945 which has no particular significance in Irish history (1949 at least marks a constitutional change)’ (ASTI 1966d, 52–54). ‘Reports On Educational Sub-Committees On Proposed Revised Intermediate Certificate Courses’. This study uses it as a starting point for its periodisation.
15 1969 saw the introduction of three alternative courses, according to how history and geography related to one another in terms of allocation of marks for scholarship purposes.
16 All figures were compiled from Department of Education, Examination Papers 1926–1968.
17 This period is specifically defined as ‘Medieval Ireland’ in Cosgrove et al. (Citation1993).
18 The individual topics and the reasons for their rise (or fall) in popularity are discussed in more detail later.
19 This could be seen as 12 as in 1952 there was a question directly on the Treaty of Limerick, which ended the wars. However, it was not included in the above tally as a central element of the questions was on how the Treaty was violated by the Penal Laws, and so dealt more with the eighteenth century rather than the fighting itself.
20 Between 1940 and 1948, four other topics were asked on more often, with questions on the Norman Invasion, the Irish Confederate Wars, 1798, and the Land League each being asked 5 times over the same period.
21 Of this 15, 10 questions were asked on the actual fighting and five on the leaders of the Gaelic Army: three questions specifically asked on Hugh O’Neill and two on Red Hugh O’Donnell. Note: It was not until 1937 that the Nine Years War was specifically mentioned in questions.
22 A certain proviso needs to be mentioned in relation to the figures compiled here. There were a number of questions which, like the themes in the topics, covered more than one area (e.g. questions on foreign aid and the Desmond Rebellion in 1937, or on the Flight of the Earls and the Ulster Plantation in 1931 (‘Emigration/Plantation’)), and have thus been included twice in the calculations. However, examples like these were infrequent and as such are not considered to have altered the overall results and conclusions being made.
23 For a brief overview of the period, see Brown (Citation2004).
24 Ó Néill and Ó Dómhnaill had featured in the ‘important men’ section before, however.
25 The second part of the question asked the student to ‘Write a note on the career of Donal O’Sullivan Beare’. This was an anomaly, being the only time that O’Sulivan Beare was mentioned in the Intermediate Examination.
26 This aligning of ‘Ireland “proper”’ with the Continent was repeatedly stressed in Corcoran and Timothy (Citation1922, 563–564).
27 As an example of the shifting position of the Irish Free State/Éire/Republic towards Europe and abroad, consider the repeated attempts by the Free State to gain entry into the League of Nations, finally granted in 1930, before developing to the increased stance of Irish neutrality, and thus independence from Europe during the Second World War. For a comprehensive study on this see Kennedy (Citation1996).
28 This case can similarly be made for the Land League, which in the fifteen years from 1926 to 1940 was only mentioned three times, but which was then broached five times in eight years between 1941 and 1948, coinciding with a period in which Ireland’s claims to its own territory were being disputed, with the Treaty ports, as well as an increased period of concern over the rights and importance of land in general in Ireland. For further discussion of the importance of land at this time, see Dooley (Citation2004).
29 On the rarer occasions when the ‘Insurrection of 1641’ was specified (1960 for example), it was usually asked for its initial causes, and then how it led to the Confederation. While the number of specific questions asked on the topic between 1926 and 1968 was 21, this could potentially be increased to 29, as in 1958 and in 1964 an entire question (3a) revolved around describing in detail two of four influential figures, all of whom were connected with Ireland in 1640s, including Thomas Wentworth Earl of Strafford, James Butler, and Eoghan Rua O’Neill each time. Furthermore, in 1968, two specific events were called for description, both dating from this period, – the Battle of Benburb (1646) and the Siege of Clonmel (1650). The higher figure is more realistic in considering the emphasis on this period.
30 It is worth noting that the Ulster Plantations were the only plantation specifically cited as part of the outlined syllabus from 1941 onwards (though the Munster plantation was asked about on occasion in connection with the Elizabethan wars and James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald).
31 A similar example arose in 1937 with regards to a question (Q. 7) on the Act of Settlement, where after being asked to describe the position of Ireland under the Act, the student was asked to ‘show how that Settlement contained the germs of a new war’. Again, the language is telling.
32 These included a series of articles on the life of St Patrick, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 19281929, (Ser. 6, Vol. XVIII, 1–21; Ser. 6, Vol. XIX, 1–15) and in the ‘Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy’, March 1926, Vol. XXXVII, Sect. C, 118–140.
33 The majority of these figures were not asked again after the syllabus became more structured in 1937 Question 8 in 1936 also saw Robert Emmet being mentioned for the first time at examination level, though as he was not part of the official syllabus outlined topics, he was mentioned just three times in the 43-year period. It is also worth mentioning that European conditions were called for in relation to the question on Emmet as well. The examiners were not then looking for a blinkered view on Ireland. This is the same with the discussion of the Jacobite war that year as well, asking why it was called ‘the War of the Three Kingdoms’ as part of the question.
34 In 1932, Fianna Fáil was elected to power in the Irish Dáil, in place of Cumann na nGaedhael. The Fianna Fáil administration is widely accepted as being more nationalistic than its predecessor, and sought to intensify the policy of Gaelicisation (see e.g. (Girvin Citation2003).
35 These guidelines continued in operation, unchanged, until 1972.
36 In terms of the categorisation of topics, the Williamite Wars for example was not considered as ‘political’, in the understanding used in this chapter but more to do with religion and fighting a foreign oppressor (in this case William III). However, one question asked in 1932 directly referenced constitutional politics, and implied a narrative of an Irish parliamentary tradition, ‘State what you know of the Dublin Parliament of James II (1689) Show how its proceedings were connected with previous Irish history’.
37 Murphy stated (in summation to an interview with writer John Broderick) that
‘In the 1940s, when Broderick was at school the Irish self-image was still unequivocally Catholic, separatist and (theoretically, at least), Gaelic … . In the 1960s, a revisionist view of Irish history began to be voiced, This new perspective on the past, combined with the other forces for change that characterised the period, shook the secure Irish self-image and blurred the old certainties about national identity’.
38 This theory argued for an inverse relationship between the age of a nation and the nationalistic bias in the teaching of history; that, as the nation becomes older (and connected with the social transformation which occurs when the old revolutionary generation is gradually replaced by the new (such as the 1960s in the Irish context)), that the nationalistic bias lessens.
39 From the late 1960s onwards in Ireland, courses, courses in history, and geography began to become more varied, with greater social and economic input being given and allowing some scope for individual project work by students (see Coolahan Citation1981, 197).
40 This quote was cited in McMahon (Citation1975, 65), however, the following addendum was not included, thus changing the overall meaning of the quotation.
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Colm Mac Gearailt
Colm Mac Gearailt was awarded his PhD from Trinity College Dublin in 2019. His doctoral thesis was entitled Teaching the nations' past: Irish history in secondary schools, 1924-69. This article is an abridged version of a chapter from this. He currently lectures at Marino Institute of Education, on the B.Oid trí Mheán na Gaeilge degree course, on the History of Irish Education, as well as on the PME primary degree course with Hibernia College.