1. Education
This teaching and learning resource has been produced by the Irish Qualitative Data
Archive as part of the NUI Maynooth/NDLR Learning Innovation Community Support
Project, “Teaching and Learning Through the Archive”.
The presentation includes short interview excerpts from the Life Histories and Social
Change Project, where the respondent have given their consent to be identified.
Irish Qualitative Data Archive, 2012
Additional teaching resources are available at www.iqda.ie
Development of this resource funded by National University of Ireland Maynooth /
National Digital Learning Repository
Attribute as follows: Irish Qualitative Data Archive [distributor], 2012.

2. Education
Image courtesy of The National Library of Ireland

3. Concept: Modernity
“A series of historical changes or processes in the material
world [which also involve] intellectual assumptions that
legitimate and sanction those changes”
(Tovey and Share 2003, p. 20)

4. Education is intricately bound up with
questions about modernity: it is seen as a key
to modernisation and as a…driver of social,
economic and cultural change.”
(Tovey and Share 2003, p. 188)
Image courtesy of The National Library of Ireland

5. Areas covered by this
presentation
1. Education in the 1920s and 1930s:
Independent Ireland
2. Education in the 1950s: economic
decline
3. Education in the 1960s:
industrialisation
Image courtesy of
The National Library of
Ireland

6. Themes running through
presentation
Education and modernity in Ireland
• Decline of traditional authority
• Growth of meritocracy
• Meeting requirements of industrial society
The contradictory effects of
education
• Reproducing inequalities
Image courtesy of
The National Library of
Ireland

7. 1. Education in the 1920s
and 1930s:
Independent Ireland

8. Education in the 1920s and 1930s:
Independent Ireland
Education was
“a major instrument
in the political Image courtesy of Jane Gray
consolidation and
rejuvenation of
independent Ireland”
(Fahey quoted in Tovey,
Share and Corcoran,
2007)

9. Education in the 1920s and 1930s:
Independent Ireland
The School Attendance Act of 1926 made school
attendance compulsory for all children from six until
fourteen years of age.
Sanctions for non-compliance extended from visits and
formal warnings to fines on parents and, ultimately,
committal to ‘industrial schools,’ where children
could be detained up to the age of 16 (Fahey quoted in
Tovey, Share and Corcoran, 2007).
This had significant impact on the contribution of
children’s labour in the family, particularly in
agriculture. Fahey (1992) calculated that the
Image courtesy of implementation of this Act had direct consequences
The National Library of
Ireland for about a third of families with school-age
children.

10. Think about...
Listen to the interview excerpt on the next slide
and think about the following questions.
Q1. The interview participant describes having to leave school
at 14, “to earn your living slaving for people”. How did the
requirement to attend school conflict with other demands
for children and their families?
Q2. The Education Act (1926) meant that all children were
required to attend school to the age of 14. How did “The
modernising effects of education…*lead+ to a significant
reordering of the relationships between children, families
and the state” (Tovey and Share 2003, p. 203)?

11. An account of school in the 1930s
Audio clip Source: Life Histories and Social Change Project.
http://www.iqda.ie/content/life-history-and-social-change-project
INT: When did you start going to school, can you remember?
RESP: What age was I?
INT: Yeah.
RESP: Between six and seven, it was that time.
INT: That would be about 1930.
RESP: Yes and finished at 14 and out the road then to earn your living slaving for people, and it was literally slaving.
INT: What can you remember from school?
RESP: It was the same as above, the same as there today as it was then, they put a wing onto it extra since.
INT: How many people were in the school at the time?
RESP: I don't know around 110 I'd say.
INT: Pupils? My goodness that’s big. And did you have much of a walk to it?
RESP: We had to walk about a mile and a half and in the summer without a shoe on our foot of course. Then the roads
weren't tarmacadamed, they were sandy and stones and you'd hit your toe on a stone and you'd be bleeding and
the dirt going into it, there was no such talk about [unclear] or nothing, no disinfectant, you let nature deal with it.
INT: And did all of you go to the same school, was it mixed?
RESP: It was mixed, it is mixed today too. My grandchildren go to the same school there up above.
INT: And all 5 of you went there but you were all staggered. Yourself [sister]
RESP: [sister 1], myself, [sister 2], [brother 1], [brother 2]
INT: And the three girls were first. Can you remember those first days, did you have a favourite subject?
RESP: No I don't remember the very first days but I remember short after, I remember the teacher was there, two teachers,
one of them was a right devil. We were in 2nd and 3rd class that time now, she used to bring us out on the
playground, we used to get long summers at that time, I don't know where they have gone to, but we used to get big
long summers and she used to bring us out on the playground and she'd sit in the middle in a chair and we'd be
standing around her and she'd be teaching our lessons. And if you missed something she'd send you over there in
the hedge to pull a bunch of nettles to swat yourself. And we used to be up at night with the itch in our legs with the
nettles, they got all itchy at night. Wasn't she cruel? ... [continues about corporal punishment]

12. 2. Education in the
1950s:
economic decline

13. Education in the 1950s
The 1950s, ‘a miserable decade for the Irish
economy’, when real national income virtually
stagnated and net emigration reached its 20th
century peak (Ó Gráda quoted in Tovey, Share
and Corcoran, 2007).
New emphasis on meritocratic education in the
development of human capital (Breen et al.
quoted in Tovey, Share and Corcoran, 2007).
Despite the objective to modernise education,
little changed in day-to-day schooling,
particularly for working class and rural
Image courtesy of households.
The National Library of
Ireland

14. Think about...
Listen to the interview excerpt on the next slide
and think about the following questions.
Q1. Why were the interview participant’s parents reluctant to
intervene when the teacher “dished out corporal
punishment”?
Q2. The interview participant talks about the “voluntary
contribution” of fuel (turf) that each farm was expected to
contribute towards heating the school. How did such
practices reproduced traditional power relations within
the school?

15. An account of school in the 1950s
Audio clip Source: Life Histories and Social Change Project.
http://www.iqda.ie/content/life-history-and-social-change-project
LH202. Male respondent
[describes starting school – a school with two classrooms that was run by a married couple, with about 100 students; each teacher talking
about 50 students each, the wife taught Junior Infants (about 5yrs old) up to First Class (about 7 yrs old), the master taught children from
Second Class (about 8 yrs old) to Sixth Class (about 13 years old)].
INT: Were [your teachers] strict, were they fair?
RESP: She was extremely fair and was strict to the degree of control but not over. He should never have been a teacher, he
was diabolical, absolutely and totally diabolical. Corporal punishment was dished out like nobody's business, he would
lose the head several times during the week and he threw chairs around the room, hammered the blackboard, hopped
the chalk at people, you were slapped every day. If you arrived in and were given 10 sums to do and for every sum that
you had wrong you'd get two slaps. If you had spellings, for every wrong spelling you had one slap. You could come
home in the evening and your hand would literally be raised... Actually I remember one time I arrived home and I had a
cut up along there where I was actually cut with the cane and he had poked the fire, there was one fire up at the very
end with a pipe coming out of it and extending down the floor, but the master stood with his back to the fire, and the
teacher in the other room done exactly the same thing, but he used to poke the fire with his cane and he'd use the same
rod. And I remember being cut and an infection in here and my wrist being bandaged.
INT: Did you ever tell your mum or dad that you thought this guy was over the top?
RESP: Well they were aware because if you were getting dressed and iodine was applied to everything and it would
sting the living daylights out of you but it was applied to you. And if you cut your hand you'd just get the iodine, I can
remember that. And they were very reluctant to do anything about it because they felt if you done anything about it
that you would be selected, perhaps even more so. And there was an expected voluntary contribution and the
contributions used to consist of turf from the bog and each farmer that had a farm was expected to contribute the turn
and I remember even being conscious of the fact that he used to take note of the amount of turf being brought up by
horse and cart at that stage, no tractors. And the turf would be heaped outside the school wall and the older kids would
be asked to bring it in and stack it up in the hall way. When you went to the school there were doors on both ends and
the junior school was to the right and the senior school was to the left and you walked into a hallway where there were
rows of hooks to hang your coats, there wasn't even lockers at that stage, some of them would be coming in Wellington
boots even. And some of them had shoes and some of them hadn't either. But this turf used to be stacked all along the
wall inside to keep it dry. And he sort of referenced that other people didn't come with as much, I still remember that.

16. 3. Education in the
1960s:
industrialisation

17. Education and Industrialisation
from the 1960s
From the 1960s: policy change towards export-
oriented strategy and attracting foreign investment
Development of new employment opportunities,
increase in middle-class and skilled manual work
1965: Publication of report on Investment in
Education. “It was positioned very much against
the background of the programme of
industrialisation and the opening up of the Irish
economy and was centred on the idea of
manpower planning” (Tovey and Share 2003, p.
Image courtesy of
The National Library of
203)
Ireland

18. Education and Industrialisation
from the 1960s, continued
Growing emphasis on “equality of opportunity”
‘Free’ secondary education was introduced in
Ireland in 1967
Despite this, strong distinction between types of
school perpetuated social exclusion of certain
groups, so that secondary and boarding
schools catered for middleclass children, while
children from working-class or small-farm
families attended local vocational schools
Image courtesy of
The National Library of
(Whelan and Hannan quoted in Share, Tovey
Ireland and Corcoran, 2007).

19. Think about...
Listen to the interview excerpt on the next slide
and think about the following questions.
Q. The interview participant says that, “everybody wanted
to get into the other schools in Dublin”. How does this
contradict the idea of “equality of opportunity” that was
promoted in education at this time?

20. Audio clip Choosing schools in the 1980s
Source: Life Histories and Social Change Project.
http://www.iqda.ie/content/life-history-and-social-change-project
LH315
INT: So where did you go to secondary school?
RESP: [name of school in north Dublin town].
INT: How come you went to [name of school] and not in [town]?
RESP: There was no schools in [town], no secondary schools in [town].
INT: There wasn't? Cos they used to go to the one in [village], didn't they?
RESP: Yeah it was [village], well I think the deal was
INT: Cos I went to [village], and the [town] bus used to come over
RESP: Yeah the [town] bus would have come over via [village], and that was it, it was [village], [other
town], or into Dublin. So I think the deal was you had to do entrance exams into the schools in
Dublin and if you managed to get into a school in Dublin well done, otherwise you were on the bus
to [village].
INT: So going to school in Dublin would have been considered better?
RESP: Yes than going to the school in [village] cos what happened in [town] was you're going to have to get
on a bus and the people who failed the exams for the Dublin schools were on that bus. That was the
deal and because of that it was seen as they're the dummies going across to [village] because they
couldn't get into the other schools and everybody wanted to get into the other schools in Dublin.

21. Think about...
Listen to the interview excerpt on the next slide
and think about the following questions.
Q1. The interview participant talks about struggling to get
into his career of choice in avionics. How well did
education’s objective of developing human capital for a
modernising economy match the experience of the
individual?
Q2. What other factors, apart from education, were
influential in “manpower planning” and the development
of human capital?

22. Audio clip Choosing schools in the 1980s
Source: Life Histories and Social Change Project.
http://www.iqda.ie/content/life-history-and-social-change-project
INT: And what would you say your parents would have wanted you to get out of school at that time? Obviously if they
sent you to the one in Dublin they were keen on education.
RESP: Yeah
INT: What type of job would you say they wanted you to do?
RESP: Well my dad would have wanted me to get an apprenticeship that was from the word go an apprenticeship, get
yourself a job.
INT: A trade?
RESP: Get yourself a trade, yeah. He's only had two jobs, he worked in the Air Corps and he went to Aer Lingus and his move
with Aer Lingus, sent him from Aer Lingus to SLR, but he's in the same job and working with the same people.
INT: So a good steady, pensionable job.
RESP: Yeah
INT: So he wanted you to get a trade and what would you have wanted, what type of job did you want?
RESP: I wanted to get into, again I wanted to get into the airline industry. I wanted to get into avionics and stuff like that but
there was no jobs available at that time and there was no apprenticeships. I left school in ‘87
INT: Did you do your Leaving [final exams]?
RESP: Yeah I did my Leaving Cert., I left school in ‘87 and couldn't get a job. I spent six months trying to get a job with ten
pounds a month from my mum just to keep me in
INT: There was no jobs around?
RESP: Yeah there was no jobs absolutely nothing, and I wasn't allowed go on the dole that was one thing they
were adamant about that's why she gave me money.
INT: That's interesting. Why?
RESP: Her reason was you couldn't get a job in the bank if you were ever on the dole and at that stage if you'd ever
been on the dole, if you ever signed on you couldn't get a job in the bank.
INT: I never knew that.
RESP: Mmm
INT: Really?
RESP: Yeah. So she saw it as a stigma, if you'd ever been on the dole.

23. Think about...
Listen to the interview excerpt on the next slide
and think about the following questions.
Q. Having listened to all of the interview excerpts consider
the following statement:
“While education has been associated with the development
of scientific rationality, specific types of interpersonal
relationships, achievement orientation and a facility with
technology, it has also provided an arena for the
maintenance of attitudes, behaviour and relationships
that have been seen as barriers to the development of a
modern sensibility” (Tovey and Share 2003, p. 205).

24. References
Lennon, Peter and Coutard, Raoul . Extract from: The Rocky Road to Dublin
(1968), available on www.youtube.com at the following location,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05k59EhMEEI
Tovey, H. and Share, P. (2003) A Sociology of Ireland, 2nd Ed., Dublin: Gill &
McMillan.

25. Note on this teaching resource
IQDA Teaching Resources by Irish Qualitative Data Archive is licensed under
a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.iqda.ie/content/life-histories-and-social-
change-20th-century-ireland.
Life Histories and Social Change was funded by the Irish Research Council
(IRCHSS).
Images on slides 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 16 and 18 courtesy of The National Library of
Ireland. Reproduction of this images is with the written consent of The
National Library of Ireland only.
IQDA would like to acknowledge Ruth Geraghty, Linda O’Keefe and Aileen
O’Carroll for their work on these teaching resources.
Irish Qualitative Data Archive, 2012