Challenging the dominant Church hegemony in times of risk and promise: Carysfort women resist

ABSTRACT

Historically, patriarchy has been as dominant in education in Ireland as elsewhere. In the Irish context, it was promoted through the male-dominated Catholic Church, which controlled either directly or indirectly the vast majority of education institutions in the country. This dominant hegemony was most powerful during the period post-Independence, achieved in 1922, and up until the 1960s. By the 1960s, however, Irish society had begun a process of self-reflection and modernisation triggered by exposure to international ideas, the Second Vatican Council, the democratisation of education and radical changes in economic policy. This article focuses on one manifestation of this process, namely a strike initiated by female students at a female-run teacher training college in Dublin in demand of a greater voice in the nature of the curriculum taught and in the governance of the college. However, these women were protesting not against the male hegemony, rather against the women religious who perpetrated this hegemony. The focus of this study is thus on patriarchy perpetuated by women on women.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher training
• women
• historical
• history

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While the term and concept of a ‘strike’ emerged in education circles in the late nineteenth century (Robert and Tyssens 2008), the decade of the 1960s, which witnessed activism and agitation across various parts of the world, marked its apotheosis. This was the period when students at universities across the globe brought college activities to a virtual standstill in agitating on a range of civil rights’ issues, with high profile strikes across the US and parts of Europe. Students in the ‘statelet’ of Northern Ireland also engaged in civil rights’ demonstrations, particularly in Derry, Belfast and Armagh. By contrast, its southern neighbour, the Republic of Ireland, witnessed little activity, apart from a very mild strike staged by students at University College Dublin (UCD) in February 1969.

2 Irish language term for lesson notes.

3 Raidió Teilifís Éireann is the national public service media of Ireland.

4 The Irish word for police.

5 National College of Art and Design.

6 A protest similar to that at Carysfort, and for comparable reasons, had for example, already taken place at the University of Milan, in Italy, at the end of 1967. The sites of resistance here were the Catholic male college (the Augustinianum) and the Catholic female college (the Marianum), whose missions were to educate young people of low economic means so that they would become a cultural and religious élite. At the other end of the world, female student members of the Second Vatican Council-inspired ‘Breakthrough Youth Movement’ in Hong Kong went on strike throughout the first half of 1978 over the expulsion of suspected ‘leftist’ peers from the Precious Blood Golden Jubilee Catholic girls’ secondary school. This triggered a month-long sit-in by hundreds of students and teachers at the Hong Kong Cathedral who voiced their abhorrence at the actions of the Catholic Precious Blood Order of nuns who had systematically defrauded the school. Similar strikes occurred in Catholic universities and colleges across Spain and Chile. One of the largest protests was by the student movement at Loyola University in New Orleans, USA, which went on from 1964 to 1971. Here again, the battle was similar, the focus being on a perceived need for greater freedom on campus and a say in university administration, with an additional and major focus being on racial discrimination and the Vietnam War.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Judith Harford

Judith Harford is Professor of Education, Deputy Head of the School of Education and Vice Principal for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the College of Social Sciences and Law, University College Dublin. She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (London), the Ireland Canada University Foundation Flaherty Visiting Professor, 2017–18 and a Fulbright Scholar in the Social Sciences, 2018–19. She has held visiting scholar appointments at Boston College, the University of Toronto and the University of Cambridge. She specialises in the history of women’s education and in gender equality in higher education.

Tom O’Donoghue

Tom O’Donoghue is full professor in the School of Education, The University of Western Australia. He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and of The Royal Historical Society. He is also a former President of the Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society. He specialises in the history of education in the English-speaking world, with particular reference to the history of teachers and the process of education in faith-based schools.