“Straw bonnets” to superior schooling: The “failure” of the charity school movement in the context of nineteenth-century Ireland – a reappraisal

Abstract

The spectacular growth and equally spectacular decline of the eighteenth-century charity school movement prompts this examination of the contribution made by the movement to nineteenth-century schooling – particularly superior or secondary schooling. Educational historians have argued that the movement was a failure. This paper argues that only in the case of one charity school-type – the charity day school – may failure be safely attributed to the charity school movement. The charity boarding schools, hospitals and asylums were far from being a failure. Indeed, in nineteenth-century Ireland, these schools, in response to social change, advanced from “straw bonnets” to superior schooling. Historians have also noted that the real difficulty surrounding the charity school is that of defining it. For Jones, it was an omnibus term that embraced all schools of a like nature. And indeed charity schools constitute a broad genre of schooling. In order to qualify the received assessment of the charity school movement in terms of “failure”, it has been found necessary to classify the charity school types within the broad genre they constitute. The paper assembles a number of charity school types and identifies the charity boarding school as that institution that successfully made the transition to superior status. The characteristics of the superiorisation process are outlined, as are the unique circumstances of nineteenth-century Ireland that facilitated, indeed required, it.