Piety and Privilege: Catholic Secondary Schooling in Ireland and the Theocratic State, 1922–1967 by Tom O’Donoghue and Judith Harford

Abstract

Reviewed by: Piety and Privilege: Catholic Secondary Schooling in Ireland and the Theocratic State, 1922–1967 by Tom O’Donoghue and Judith Harford Brian Fleming (bio) Piety and Privilege: Catholic Secondary Schooling in Ireland and the Theocratic State, 1922–1967, Tom O’Donoghue and Judith Harford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 256 pages. A major feature of Irish education in the last two centuries has been the dominant position of the churches, particularly the Catholic Church. Histories dealing with and explaining developments during the period invariably refer to this phenomenon and its impact. In their recent book, O’Donoghue and Harford make the point that no single work to date has addressed in detail how that dominance developed and was maintained by the Catholic Church and used, as they see it, to promote piety and privilege in Ireland in the period between the establishment of the independent Irish state in 1922 and 1967. So, that’s what they set out to do. Rather than adopting a hypothesis, they took the view that a more descriptive approach was needed. Both authors have written extensively on a range of topics including aspects of the history of Irish education. They also have access to an oral history project they undertook some years ago to capture people’s experiences of attending school in Ireland in the middle of the last century. In addition, they have extensive knowledge of the history of other education systems which allowed them to contrast the approach of the Catholic Church in Ireland with that which unfolded in other jurisdictions. In summary, they were ideally placed to undertake this project. In order to explain the context of Irish education when Irish Independence was secured in 1922, the authors present a useful summary of the main events that occurred during the previous hundred years. In particular, two policy developments had a fairly transformative effect on Irish education during that period. A watershed development occurred in 1831 when the British government decided to fund elementary (primary) education in Ireland. The mechanism used was to establish a Board of Commissioners to oversee the system and allocate resources. This was a particular achievement as the government did not introduce state funding for primary education in Britain for a further forty years. Whilst some scholars suggest that the government took this step in an effort to ‘civilize’ the unruly Irish, the main reason was a campaign for reform over the previous decades which came to fruition under Bishop James Doyle. It was a hard-won concession and the notion that E. G. Stanley, the British government’s chief secretary in Ireland, ‘championed’ the reform is misplaced. In the latter part of the nineteenth century the Catholic [End Page 320] hierarchy secured a further concession in relation to secondary (then known as intermediate) education when the Intermediate Education Act (1878) was passed. Under its terms, an examination board was established which disbursed funds to schools based on the success rates of students in the public examinations thus circumventing the politically sensitive controversy that direct state subvention to denominational schools would have engendered. So, at both primary and secondary level a system was now in place whereby the church authorities controlled educational provision whilst at the same time receiving some financial aid from the state. That’s what prevailed when the independent Irish state came into being. In 1922, the vast majority of the leading politicians in the newly independent Ireland were quite happy with the status quo in relation to education. The close association that had developed in the previous five decades or so between the Church and the independence movement meant that there was no significant anti-clerical feeling in Ireland similar to that which had arisen in other countries. Thus, the Church was allowed to retain ownership of the schools, control appointments of teachers and principals, and decide on curriculum by and large. The situation was copper-fastened in the constitution adopted in 1937, which describes the education system as state aided as distinct from provided. This suited successive governments as they had the advantage of an education system provided at far less than cost. Most of those working in the schools were doing...