Why do we send children to school? Who should take responsibility for children's health and education? Should girls and boys be educated separately or together? These questions provoke much contemporary debate, but also have a longer, often-overlooked history. Mary Hatfield explores these questions and more in this comprehensive cultural history of childhood in nineteenth-century Ireland. Many modern ideas about Irish childhood have their roots in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, when an emerging middle-class took a disproportionate role in shaping the definition of a 'good' childhood. This study deconstructs several key changes in medical care, educational provision, and ideals of parental care. It takes an innovative holistic approach to the middle-class child's social world, by synthesising a broad base of documentary, visual, and material sources, including clothes, books, medical treatises, religious tracts, photographs, illustrations, and autobiographies. It offers invaluable new insights into Irish boarding schools, the material culture of childhood, and the experience of boys and girls in education.

This book explores the impact of the Lesson Books of the National Board of Education in Ireland in the nineteenth century. The author contextualizes the books used in national schools as well as across the wider British Empire: in doing so, he highlights the influence of the religious, social, political and cultural realms of the time. Firmly grounding the volume in its historical context, the author goes on to explore the contemporary moral climate and social influences, including imperialism, morality, rote-learning and socialization. Through meticulous analysis of each Lesson Book, the author traces the evolution of education in Ireland as a reflection of contemporary society, as it changes and transforms in line with cultural, religious and social changes. This pioneering and comprehensive volume will be of interest and value to students and scholars of education in Ireland as well as education in the British Empire more widely.

This book examines the radical reform that occurred during the final two decades of British rule in Ireland when William Starkie (1860–1920) presided as Resident Commissioner for the Board. Following the lead of industrialized nations, Irish members of parliament sought to encourage the establishment of a state-funded school system during the early nineteenth century. The year 1831 saw the creation of the Irish National School System. Central to its workings was the National Board of Education which had the responsibility for distributing government funds to aid in the building of schools, the payment of inspectors and teachers, the publication of textbooks, and the cost of teacher training. In the midst of radical political and cultural change within Ireland, visionaries and leaders like Starkie filled an indispensable role in Irish education. They oversaw the introduction of a radical child-centered primary school curriculum, often referred to as the ‘new education’. Filling a gap in Irish history, this book provides a much needed overview of the changes that occurred in primary education during the 22 years leading up to Ireland’s independence.

Volume IV: The Irish Book in English 1800-1891 details the story of the book in Ireland during the nineteenth century, when Ireland was integrated into the United Kingdom. The chapters in this volume explore book production and distribution and the differing of ways in which publishing existed in Dublin, Belfast, and the provinces.

This volume focuses on the creation, structure and evolution of the Irish national system of education. It illustrates how the system was shaped by the religious, social and political realities of nineteenth century Ireland and discusses the effects that the system had upon the Irish nation: namely that it was the chief means by which the country was transformed from one in which illiteracy predominated to one in which most people, even the poorest, could read and write.

Covering three centuries of unprecedented demographic and economic changes, this textbook is an authoritative and comprehensive view of the shaping of Irish society, at home and abroad, from the famine of 1740 to the present day. The first major work on the history of modern Ireland to adopt a social history perspective, it focuses on the experiences and agency of Irish men, women and children, Catholics and Protestants, and in the North, South and the diaspora. An international team of leading scholars survey key changes in population, the economy, occupations, property ownership, class and migration, and also consider the interaction of the individual and the state through welfare, education, crime and policing. Drawing on a wide range of disciplinary approaches and consistently setting Irish developments in a wider European and global context, this is an invaluable resource for courses on modern Irish history and Irish studies.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, thousands of pupils attended boarding schools in various places across the globe. Their experiences were vastly different, yet they all had in common that they were separated from their families and childhood friends for a period of time in order to sleep, eat, learn and move within the limited spatial sites of the boarding school. This book frames these ‘boarding schools’ as a global and transcultural phenomenon that is part of larger political and social developments of European imperialism, the Cold War, and independence movements. Drawing together case studies from colonial South Africa, colonial India, Dutch Indonesia, early twentieth-century Nigeria, Fascist Spain, Ghana, Nazi Germany, nineteenth-century Ireland, North America and the Soviet Union, this edited collection examines the ways in which boarding schools extracted pupils from their original social background in order to train, mold and shape them so that they could fit into the perceived position in broader society. The book makes the broader argument that framing boarding schools as a global phenomenon is imperative for a deepened understanding of the global and transnational networks that linked people as well as ideas and practices of education and childhood in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The history of formal education for Irish women was characterised by a dichotomy: should a girl be educated for the private sphere and a dutiful subservience, or should she be educated for independent thought and paid employment? Her role models were either women who - like Minerva the goddess of wisdom - valued intellectual pursuits, or women who - like the Madonna - were pious and dutiful and accepted that their primary role was motherhood. This book is the only complete study of the formal education of Irish women and girls. Based on extensive research in original sources, it presents a fascinating social history of the educational experience of the female gender in Ireland between 1700 and 1920. The book, which examines its theme in three major sections, covers every aspect of formal - and indeed informal - schooling and tuition. Consequently, the reader is introduced to such areas as private education, orphanages, industrial schools, national schools, convents, intermediate schools, and colleges of higher education. Section One examines the history of education prior to the intervention of the state. Sources include records of private education, charity schools, and foundations of the early Catholic teaching orders. Section Two examines state intervention. The introduction of the national school system brought mass literacy to girls of the lower classes but with a gendered curriculum. At convent and boarding schools, middle-class girls received and education suited to their roles in life. However, in the mid-nineteenth century we find the genesis of the concept of academic education for girls. Finally, Section Three deals with the intellectual liberation of women, with particular reference to state support for Intermediate education from 1878, and the campaign for access to higher education for women. Formal education brought with it an opening of the professions, and facilitated access to a range of paid employment for women.

Is conflict between Catholics and Protestants really the key to understanding Irish history?