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- In memory of my late beloved father

William J. McKechin

Going It Alone

Catholic Schools in Scotland

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© 2017 Estate of the late William J. McKechin

Cover, Illustrations: St. Mungo’s School, Glasgow

Editing: Ann McKechin

Publisher: tredition

ISBN

Paperback978-3-7323-9538-5

Hardcover978-3-7323-9539-2

eBook978-3-7323-9540-8

All rights reserved

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 – A Church almost obliterated

Chapter 1 -References

Chapter 2- Irish National System of Education

Chapter 2 - References

Chapter 3- Catholic Resurgence

Chapter 3 - References.

Chapter 4 – Fear follows Emancipation

Chapter 4 – References

Chapter 5 – Early Promise Not Sustained

Chapter 5 – References

Chapter 6 – Refusing to face the Inevitable

Chapter 6 - References

Chapter 7 – Reluctant Partners of the State

Chapter 7 – References

Chapter 8 – A Fragile Plant

Chapter 8 - References

Chapter 9 – The long haul to Parity

Chapter 9 – References

Chapter 10 – A rapidly changing Church

Chapter 10 - References

Chapter 11 – A fundamental Flaw?

Chapter 11 - References

Abbreviations

Bibliography

Foreword

This book was written by my father, William J. McKechin during the late 1990’s but sadly at that time he was unable to find a suitable publisher. He died in 2005 at the age of 88 after suffering for a period from Alzheimer’s and due to my own career pressures, I was unable to spend time on examining the text until recently. I have left the text largely unaltered apart from some corrections and tidying amendments but take responsibility for any other errors. Despite the period that has elapsed, I believe that the text is of interest to a wider audience both from a historical position and because many of the key issues remain.

The decline in church attendance and religious belief has accelerated and there has been an utter collapse in those willing to put themselves forward for a religious vocation. The Church hierarchy is still to come to terms with how it will develop a new relationship with its increasingly elderly laity and how it will be able to reach out to parents and their children after the years of schooling have finished.

Many Catholic schools are very popular although this is based primarily on their academic success rather than the ability to embed church dogma in its pupils. The collapse of religious observance in poorer communities has led to the Church taking an increasingly pragmatic response with a growing number of shared primary school campuses. As more and more children have parents who grew up in different denominations, there are more non-Catholic children in Catholic schools and Catholic children in non-Catholic schools. In addition, many children from Muslim families attend Catholic schools – Notre Dame Secondary school in Glasgow which is the only state girls school in Scotland has one of the highest percentage of Muslim pupils in the country. The Church has recognised that the days when it directed parents where to send their children have long disappeared. But the question of why we should have separate denominational schools remains.

My father’s own experience provided him with a unique insight into the development of Catholic schools during the 20th century. He was born in Paisley in 1917, the youngest of a large family with seven older sisters. Two of his sisters studied to be primary school teachers – including at that time spending their final year of study living in a convent! My father joked that he was only given two career choices as an academically gifted child of a miner – either become a priest or become a teacher. He declined the first option, including the opportunity to study at a private Jesuit school, and opted for the latter. He attended the first Catholic secondary school to be built in Scotland that wasn’t run by a religious order – St. Mirin’s, Paisley whilst his sisters attended the nearby St. Margaret’s which was run by the Faithful Companion of Jesus – an English order of nuns who ran several feepaying convent schools south of the border. He graduated in science from the University of Glasgow in 1939 but his teacher training studies were interrupted by war duties and were not resumed until 1946. When he started teaching in Renfrewshire in the late 1940’s he was the only science teacher in any Catholic school in the whole county to hold an honours degree. He saw at first hand the impact of the shortage of trained staff on those children from the poorest backgrounds, particularly girls – when they entered secondary school they were only provided with 30 minutes’ science teaching a week.

With the support of the local Director of Education, my father studied for a post-graduate Master’s degree in Education psychology at Glasgow but becoming increasingly disillusioned by the lack of management and vision in the schools’ sector, opted to take up a position in the early 1950’s as a Physics lecturer at Paisley College of Technology (now part of the University of the West of Scotland) where he continued to work until his retirement. However, he continued to be closely interested in schools through his growing political involvement with the Labour Party. He was elected a Councillor in Paisley in 1962 and in the early 1970’s became the only Labour party appointed Convenor of the Education Committee of the former Renfrewshire County Council. Following the re-organisation of local government in Scotland in 1974 he was appointed the Vice Chair of Strathclyde Regional Council’s Education Committee (then the largest schools’ authority in Western Europe) which he held until he stood down from political office in 1978. He also wrote several substantial essays and numerous articles on educational issues.

My father was passionate about helping those from the poorest backgrounds even if it involved ruffling the feathers of the establishment. His call in the late 1960’s for Catholic children to be allowed to attend science and mathematics subject classes in non-denominational schools due to the chronic shortage of teaching staff and his subsequent questioning of the need for separate schools was met initially with angry and highly personal denunciations via the pulpit in local churches. Thankfully many members of the clergy were much more sensible and charitable - such as the late Mgr. Coyle who represented the church on the Regional Educational Committee at the same time as my father and became a good friend.However in the subsequent decades the Church has remained reluctant to engage in public debate despite the enormous change in social attitudes to established religion.

The challenge for our Church to be more open and honest both to their own believers and the wider community is still there but time is running out. It’s time to recognise that the days of going it alone are now past.

Ann McKechin

July 2017

Preface

More than eighty years after the passing of the 1918 Education (Scotland) Act, an Act which it was hoped would solve the problem of Catholic schools; a solution which the Catholic Church came to believe was one of the best settlements between Church and State over Catholic education - Monsignor Brown, the Catholic Church’s chief negotiator during the passing of the Act described it thus: ‘As a settlement of the difficult problem of religious teaching in schools for a minority it is unique in the world’ - not only does the Catholic Church feel insecure about its schools, but some Catholics have ceased to send their children to them.

The account of Catholic schools in Scotland which follows will, I hope, help to explain why this is happening and why the Catholic Church displays such sensitivity on any issue which in the slightest way impinges on Catholic schools, reacting with undue vehemence and intransigence to any querying of their efficacy or necessity. It is a reaction based on a legacy of fear and insecurity, but in recent times there has been added to this legacy the uncertainties that have arisen within the Church ever since in 1963, at Vatican Council II it decided to come to terms with the modern world. In Scotland, much of this has centered on the need for Catholic schools which in another sense is a mode of discussing the relationship between Catholics and their separated brethren, but also the role of the Catholic and Catholicism in the broader realms of society. In other words, the argument about Catholic schools is primarily an argument within the Catholic Church on how best to proceed to achieve the aims of Vatican II. In this respect, I am on the side which thinks that these aims will never be achieved if this barrier of separate schools persists.

Chapter 1 – A Church almost obliterated

Ever since its earliest days the Christian Church has been involved in education, being left as the sole repository of learning when the Roman educational system disintegrated in the last days of the Roman Empire with the onset of what is termed the Dark Ages, the pursuit and transmission of knowledge only fitfully surviving in the monasteries of early Christendom. In the tenth century, the emergence of Charlemagne as a strong ruler established some stability in the embryonic feudal system so that cathedral schools began to be established in Episcopal sees. The schools were completely ecclesiastical in character, students and scholars all being in some form of holy orders. With the growth and development of these cathedral schools, education became embedded in the life and work of the Church. Although in many respects the form of education followed that of the earlier system from which historically it was derived, in that instruction was conducted through the medium of Latin, not the vernacular, with a curriculum constrained within what had been salvaged from the seven liberal arts taught in the Roman schools and with the works studied those of the classical and early Christian authors which had survived the Empire’s demise, its aim had changed. The aim of the Romans was to produce a man cultivated enough to take his place in public affairs i.e. the education of ruling elite. The aim of Christian education was to secure and promote the Christian faith. This was mainly assigned to the clergy, although often aided by those with temporal power; essentially this was also the education of an elite

The feudal nobility had little interest or concern with academic learning so the Church remained the dominant influence in education throughout the whole medieval period. In time, the schools were extended to include members of the laity, but those taught tended to be the sons of the wealthy and the powerful (women were almost totally excluded from education). The poor were also excluded unless they were destined to enter the Church, although many of those who obtained minor orders, such as that of a clerk, engaged in occupations which we today would regard as secular, but we must remember that at that time, as in present day Iran, there was no well-defined division between the religious and the secular, both functioning in a fusion which seldom permitted sundering. In many parts of Europe, including England, serfs were forbidden any form of education! Although popes and bishops frequently called for extension of schools and for fees to be abolished, little was achieved in extending schooling to the mass of population. It has been estimated that in England in the fourteenth century less than one percent of the population ever attended school.1.1 In Scotland, a much poorer country, the percentage was presumably no better. Despite the exhortations of the hierarchy a bureaucracy sophisticated enough to create and administer a widespread system of education was still to evolve. That had to wait a few more centuries.

The Renaissance with its emphasis on learning widened the scope of education and strongly influenced what was provided in schools, but since the Humanist Movement that arose from it was derived from the rediscovery of the Classics, this influence reinforced the emphasis placed on Latin as the medium of instruction and the classics as the main source of literature. However, the introduction of the teaching of Greek into the higher levels of schooling and the wider source of Latin authors now available, against the fragmentary remains that had served during most of the medieval period greatly enhanced the level of education now provided. The early Italian Humanists’ educational aims showed a marked resemblance to those of Classical times. Liberal studies were considered essentially how a person attained the ability to participate in civic affairs. The education they advocated was again essentially that of an elite. This reversion of the aim of education to secular goals caused concern in the Church but this concern was allayed by Erasmus, not by denouncing Humanism or by trying to impede in an obscurantist way the spread of this rediscovered knowledge and its influence on intellectual life, but by diverting humanist philosophy to religious ends. Erasmus argued that many of the classical writers, poets and philosophers, although pagan, did propound moral and ethical views which could contribute to a Christian way of life and were thus not incompatible to Christian learning. In this way, the expanded form of education arising from the humanistic trend was absorbed into the Church system with its aim once again that of promoting the Christian faith.

Erasmus was a contemporary of Luther but his Christian Humanism did not prevent the Reformation nor influence its course of disruption in any way. That could hardly be expected from what was essentially an expanded and re-orientated curriculum, but its philosophy and content were adopted by Luther and his followers who laid great stress on education as a means of consolidating and promoting the Reformed Church. Although there are indications that the Church had become aware of the necessity to reform before even Luther appeared on the scene, the Reformation led to the Counter - Reformation which was directed towards containing the Protestant Reformation and winning back what was lost. Much of this task fell to the recently founded Order of Jesus. Their approach was through education. With their emphasis on developing educational method as outlined in their detailed ‘ratio studiorum’, they evolved a highly efficient system of teaching, but the curriculum of their schools, like those of Luther’s was based on Christian Humanism. In both sets of schools, teaching was through the medium of Latin, confined mainly to the liberal arts and was in both cases essentially the education of elite. Mass education did not enter either side’s consciousness. Few states felt the necessity of providing it, fewer still, if any, had the necessary, expertise, resources or an administration advanced enough to organise on the scale required. The education that was provided for those not of the elite reached only a few and its provision was spasmodic, fragmentary, uncoordinated and at a level seldom rising above the rudimentary. With both Catholic and Protestant, the main thrust of education was directed towards the powerful and influential or those who would become so, to protect and promote their respective faiths. To each, it was a campaign to win the hearts and minds of leaders and decision makers and schools were to be one of the chief weapons. It resulted in Europe being split into two hostile camps, broadly the north became Protestant while the south remained Catholic, continuously vying with each other and attempting to enlarge their sphere of influence at the expense of the other. The followers of one faith unfortunately domiciled in the home territories of the other had to suffer the consequences. The struggle sullied the face of Europe for the next three centuries. It still persists in Ulster! It was a situation with close parallels to the recent times where Europe, if not the world was again divided into two opposing blocs, until the arrival of Gorbachev on the world scene, only this time in the prevailing materialistic atmosphere, separated not by religious differences but by politico - economic ones viz. one capitalist, the other communist. As before, both maintained their mutual isolation, being suspicious, apprehensive, although derisive of the other. Both strove incessantly for supremacy and both insisted on conformity from their citizens. Even yet, communists in this country are not favoured, but life for them is much easier than that of their counterparts in U.S.A.

After the Reformation, Catholics in Britain had to endure right up to the beginning of the nineteenth century a whole series of oppressive and punitive measures to wean them away for their religious adherence. They were forbidden to teach, to run schools, to send their children abroad to be educated, to attend Universities, to enter professions and to various other restrictions that effectively reduced them to second class citizenry. They were not alone, Non-conformists, especially in England were also inflicted with social and legal disabilities, although being Protestant they were not subjected so fully to the rigours of these sanctions. This demand for religious conformity stemmed from the assumption of each persuasion that they were the sole repository of Divine revelation and that they and they alone abided by the true Word of God: those that in any way dissented from them could only reach salvation by repenting of their ways and converting to those of the true religion! The urge for religious conformity derived mainly from this intensity of belief, but underlying it was also a desire for political stability and national security. The vagaries of the then contemporary European politics did not fit exactly with a Catholic -Protestant divide, many alliances and antagonisms transgressed it, but differences in religion inspired political differences which in turn inflamed religious rivalries. It was easy to assume that eradication of sectarian opponents or rivals would lead to the elimination of subversive elements and to political tranquility. The Stuarts in their bid to regain the throne, first with the disastrous Irish campaign of James II, which foundered at the Battle of the Boyne and with the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite rebellions, ensured that the enforcement of these punitive measures did not begin to fade with time as the turbulence of the Reformation and its aftermath receded. Rather each of these episodes only increased anti - Catholic feeling and the presumption of their potential treason, leading to these measures being more vigorously executed.

As already stated, with both Catholics and Protestants the main thrust of education was directed towards the powerful and influential. It was assumed that the knowledge imparted plus the training given would mould their beliefs into the desired pattern and that in turn this would induce their social inferiors to follow suit. It was the received wisdom of the times; indeed, it has prevailed in many guises up to the present, that this section of society was incapable of rational judgment or of absorbing learning beyond its rudiments and thus in the nature of things merely aped its masters. This explains why the government went to such lengths to prohibit wealthy Catholic families sending their sons abroad for their education. All those sent abroad would have the Catholic education they could not have at home. Some would return as priests, but all presumably would return with their catholicity reinforced. Cutting off this source of leadership and reassurance could only weaken the Catholic cause. Without priests, it would become more difficult to practice their religion. Without a Catholic education, the sons of the powerful might be more easily weaned away from their Catholic tradition. Once they renounced their Catholicism, the rest would follow. On the other hand, if these sons of noblemen were free to be educated abroad they could return to form a powerful fifth column for the restoration of Catholicism.

The education given to the masses was different in aim and content. Its main emphasis was the inculcation of piety, tending to be limited to the acquirement of sufficient literacy to enable the pupil to absorb the moral and religious instruction given to him. Ostensibly it was to make the pupil more aware of his religion and more assiduous in his practice of it, but it was also an instrument of social control. In an era in which, overall there was little movement of population, where communities lived in comparative isolation, with communications, difficult, tedious and expensive, the only outlet to the outside world was through the written word. Print was scarce and expensive but it was exclusively the media, unlike to-day where newspapers, books, pamphlets, radio, videos, recorders, television etc. shower down on us in an incessant infliction. Thus, the school, even if it only bestowed a smattering of literacy and even less of numeracy exerted a much greater dominance than is possible to-day where schools must operate in competition with these other compelling influences. With a curriculum so concentrated on religion, it is easy to understand the significance the churches gave to their schools in the prolonged religious tussle of the centuries following the Reformation. To-day our greater curriculum development and psychological insight tend to make us more sceptical of the efficacy of these schools. Their emphasis on rote learning and the dearth of any appreciation of the need to fit the presentation of material to the age and ability of the pupil, even ignoring all the other disabilities from which schools of this calibre suffered; - poor accommodation, poor attendance, inadequate teachers, lack of suitable or any text-books, etc. was sufficient to ensure their inefficiency. Yet as remarked, with the absence of any other forms of enlightenment and persuasion, their influence was probably more than schools exert to-day.

The Catholic Church in Scotland was almost completely extinguished at the Reformation. Some of the powerful families, such as the Semples of Renfrewshire remained Catholic for a considerable time afterwards, but the Penal laws effectively negated any influence they might have wielded. Catholicism only survived precariously in the country’s outer fringes where it was preserved mainly by geographical remoteness: in areas, such as the Western Highlands and Islands, the remote valleys of Banffshire and Aberdeenshire and the inaccessible areas of Galloway. Those Catholics wealthy enough sought their education abroad; others less fortunate were denied any schooling unless they abjured their faith. With the passage of time complete abjuration was not always demanded, although every effort was made to convert them to Protestantism. Except for those parts already mentioned where a certain concentration of Catholics did exist, Catholics were so few, so sparse and isolated, so demoralised that there was little possibility of them attempting to form their own schools. Those in the Western Islands and Highlands were confined within a primitive agrarian economy that at best functioned at mere subsistence level, living in scattered, isolated, remote communities with few communications even with their neighbours, far less the outside world. Schooling here was nigh impossible, made doubly sure by their Gaelic and lack of English. Nonetheless, round about 1655 schools were started in two predominately Catholic districts, Glengarry and the Isle of Barra, mainly due to the efforts of two Irish Vincentian priests, Fr. White and Fr. Dugan, both of whom were Gaelic speakers. The schools suffered from grave disabilities in that there was the lack of suitable teachers, the lack of text-books and the remote possibility of ever obtaining these written in Gaelic, plus above all the need to escape detection1.2. The only other region where Catholic schools were possible was in the upper valleys of Banffshire and of Aberdeenshire where in 1770 the percentage of Catholics in Braemar was 37%, in Strathdon 15% and in Huntly 12.5% 1.3. Yet in penal times such schools could only exist clandestinely, thus little or nothing is known of them only that they did exist. In 1652 the Presbytery of Strathbogie acted against William Gordon, a Roman Catholic who kept a combined day and boarding school. In 1672 the Aberdeenshire Presbyteries were asked to furnish particulars of those who kept Roman Catholic Schools 1.4. In 1705 there was a Catholic schoolmaster in Braemar 1.5. In 1818 the Rev. Evan MacEachen priest of Braemar opened a school in Auchendryne; in 1824 just five years before emancipation, its headmaster was fined and interdicted from again teaching in this locality as a Presbyterian school had just opened in Braemar 1.6. Thus, their catacomb existence lasted up until Catholic Emancipation in 1829, but obviously, schools which operated spasmodically and furtively from house to house, from shed to barn could scarcely provide any worthwhile schooling.

 

Chapter 1 -References

1.1Bowen J.- A History of Western Education - Vol, 2 p. 310

1.2MacLean D. -Catholicism in the Highlands and Islands 1560 -1680 pp. 5 - 13

1.3Simpson I.J. Education in Aberdeenshire before 1872 - p. 155

1.4ibid p.166

1.5ibid p.172

1.6ibid p.174.

Chapter 2- Irish National System of Education

Although colonisation of Ireland began in the 12th century, it was centuries later before the English could conquer and settle the whole country, being confined to the area of the Pale, whose boundaries fluctuated as their mastery of the Irish ebbed and flowed. It was not until the time of Cromwell that they could extend their rule to embrace all Ireland and even after that their hold on some parts was quite tenuous. Before the English encroachments, Ireland, unlike Scotland had never been able to unite in a single kingdom, the country being governed by a loose collection of chiefs or princes through a tribal or clan system like that of their fellow Gaels in Scotland. The English brought the feudal system and its pattern of land tenure, which they sought to impose. This aroused resentment and the landlordism that it created was a continual source of trouble right down until independence. After the Reformation, the English made great efforts to convert the Irish to Protestantism. Partly this was due to evangelical zeal, but mainly by their conversion it was hoped to assimilate and neutralise Ireland, as unless it could be forced to embrace the Protestant cause there was danger of it seeking to ally itself with any potential foe such as France and Spain, both Catholic countries arraigned on the opposite side of the great Protestant - Catholic divide whose struggles engulfed Europe for more than a century after the Reformation. After the Civil War and especially after the deposition of James II, the threat of Ireland becoming a haven for Jacobites and a base for incursions by them into Britain made the English even more anxious to extirpate Catholicism in Ireland, but the more they tried the more the Irish clung to their faith. To lose their faith was to lose their nationality and to allow their identity to be completely obliterated. One could not exist without the other, to remain Irish they had to remain Catholic. To cease to be a Catholic was to cease to be Irish. The two were not only synonymous; mentally they were fused irreversibly into a single concept. Consciously and sub-consciously, the Irish began to regard Catholicism and Nationalism as an indivisible entity. As a corollary to this, the imposition by the English of only their forms of government to the total exclusion of any indigenous form, together with the destruction of all native institutions meant that the Irish, in their repugnance to what was forced upon them, turned to the only authority they could recognise, namely the Catholic Church. Not only did they seek advice from their priests but they became for them the adjudicators of all that happened in the community, both secular and religious. The priest thus became the focus of an alternative society and authority that functioned unofficially side by side with the imposed one. In it he was judge, jury and advocate in all matters that could be hidden from the colonial masters. To become supreme arbiter in any community is to eventually reach the stage where your word is never questioned and you can start to lay down the law with no fear of contradiction. In his parish, the priest became unchangeable and unchallenged. Although the paths of Irish resistance and the Catholic Hierarchy at times did not coincide, most times they were close enough for there to be no conflict between them, The Church wielded enormous influence, perhaps more than any other country in Europe, apart from Poland, but the Church was in turn was influenced by Irish nationalism; at times, it seems to have been less concerned with the salvation of souls than the governance of Ireland.

After the Reformation, no schools were provided for the Catholic Irish, nor were they allowed to run their own schools. No Catholics could teach bishops and priests were banished abroad and Catholics were debarred from trades, professions and public office. Also of immense importance in a peasant country with a deep tradition towards the land, a Catholic landowner could lose his land to any of his family who chose to turn Protestant. The Penal Code was enforced with varying degrees of intensity up until the end of the 18th century and its provisions were only completely removed by the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. It was only after the 1782 Relief Act that Catholics could again teach and open their own schools, although because of their poverty few schools were opened.

However unofficial ‘hedge schools’ had operated all through the worse days of the Penal times. These schools, being illegal had to operate covertly, often under hedges, as the name implies, or in barns, sheds and houses. The teachers whose quality varied, picked up their education in various ways, either through preparing for the priesthood or in the hedge schools themselves. They were selected and employed by the parents of the children attending their school, usually for a certain fixed period and with the reputation of teachers being passed on from one district to another, migration of teachers from school to school was quite common. Teaching was in the vernacular, which in many cases was Gaelic, where the lack of suitable text books was compensated by the Celtic tradition of oral transmission of knowledge, although by the 19th. Century the lack of printed material in Gaelic led to it being replaced by English. By dint of their nature, the level of teaching in these schools must have been quite uneven. Nevertheless despite all the handicaps under which worked, they were probably as efficient as any other schools of their time, although Akenson quoting illiteracy figures from the census returns of 1861 to 1901 argues that the hedge schools did not, as some have claimed constitute a vigorous, democratic and efficient system of education no less than the national system that supplanted it.2.1 This is probably the case although even the most efficient systems find it nigh impossible to make any impression on those in abject poverty. The hedge schools were so much favoured by the Irish as to make them look back on them with a less than critical enthusiasm, because not only were they the only ones available to them to which their children could attend without attempts being made to convert them to Protestantism, but because they were their own schools, not part of a system imposed on them and by the mere fact of maintaining them they were indulging in an act of defiance. As Akenson says ‘to conquer Irish Catholics, the English had to reduce Ireland to a cultural level as low as that of a preliterate society’, thus the Irish tenaciously clung to their hedge schools 2.2. There is no doubt that the hedge schools fulfilled a need viz. the desire of the peasant for education and it was the recognition of this plus the need to remove an illegal, potentially subversive institution that eventually prompted the government to attempt to create a national system of education, although this was also prompted by the need to improve the educational provision for Protestants.

The Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) brought the charity school movement to Ireland where in 1717 a branch was formed in Dublin by Dr. H. Maule, the Anglican Bishop of Meath, but the main thrust of these schools initially fell to the Incorporated Society in Dublin for Promoting English Protestant Schools in Ireland. The Society set up nursery schools for children from 4 to 6, whilst their regular schools took them from 6 to 10 and kept them until they were ‘apprenticed’ to chimney sweeps, peddlers etc. The curriculum consisted of reading with the established catechism as text-book plus manual work in the form of spinning and weaving. The children however were used as a source of cheap labour to the extent that the manual work began to fill the whole of their school-day. The Society’s schools were originally open to Protestants but in 1776 admission was confined to those with ‘popish parents’. Between 1784 and 1787 John Howard, the prison reformer visited a number of these schools roundly condemning what he saw, declaring the children were ‘sickly, pale and such miserable objects that they were a disgrace to all society and that their reading had been neglected for the purpose of making them work for their masters.’2.3 By 1803 the Society had become so fixated by its proselytising mission that it began to found boarding schools, using them to transplant children from one school to another in order to remove them entirely from their parent’s influence. The schools were popular at first with Catholic parents who desired their children’s education but the flagrant proselytising plus the ill-treatment and exploitation of the children, whose utter poverty alone had brought them to these schools soon disillusioned them.

The Incorporated Society was the first of several Bible and Educational societies which, inspired by the evangelical movement within the Anglican Church, sprung up at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the next, all with the intention of waning Ireland from Romanism. One of these was the Association for Discountenancing Vice and Promoting the Knowledge and Practice of Christian Religion, which was founded in 1792. It was wholly a subscription society and the income it received from its subscribers was used to purchase Bibles, moral tracts and prayer books to distribute among the ‘heathen and superstitious’ Irish. The Society was incorporated in 1800, receiving then a parliamentary grant which was reviewed annually until the coming of the national system of education in 1831. Since on incorporation the Society changed from pamphleteering to education on a grand scale, this grant can be regarded as the first educational grant to be given by any British government. The Society was under the exclusive control of the clergy of the Established Church. It gave money towards establishing schools and paying teachers’ salaries, provided that the titles of the schools were vested in local church wardens and Anglican ministers, the latter to whom alone was assigned the task of appointing and dismissing schoolmasters. The Society insisted that all teachers be members of the Established Church and forbade the use of any catechism other than that of the Church of England, refused to allow any book of which the Association disapproved and demanded that children able enough read the scriptures. The schools were open to all denominations but only Church of England children were compelled to attend catechistical instruction, although all children, including Catholics were forced to read the authorised version of the Bible. Since the schools provided education at a low cost, in the beginning from 1800 to 1820 a fair proportion of the pupils were Catholics. The total for 1819 was just over 50%; but during the 1820’s the Society became increasingly disliked by Catholics when it allowed Catholic children to attend catechistical instruction, started to publish work of a controversial nature and became a proselytising agent. This caused Catholics to withdraw in large numbers and the Association dwindled into oblivion.

The London Hibernian Society was created in 1806 with the object of diffusing religious knowledge. It professed to be nondenominational, but of all the societies it seems to have been the most disreputable. The 1824 Royal Commission on Education reported that some of its schools were mere hovels, with the standard of the 3 R’s, order and regularity worse than in any other type of school. Only the Bible was given serious attention as pupils were examined in it every quarter. Its whole system seems to have been educationally unbalanced. The London Hibernian Society, unlike some others was willing to use Gaelic as a medium of instruction in its attempts to win the minds of the Catholic Irish, but although in its heyday of the 1820’s it was estimated to have 680 schools it is doubtful if it ever made any impression on the Irish. Patrick McGill in his novel ‘Glenmornan’ tells how the peasants in Donegal outwitted the Society in its attempts to convert them. Certainly, it is fiction and it is set in the late 19th century, but McGill is a most honest writer and most of his novels are based on his actual experiences. From his account, the society’s zeal far outreached its perspicacity.

Another Society which tried to convert the native Irish by teaching through the medium of Gaelic was the Baptist Society for Promoting the Gospel in Ireland. P.J. Dowling claims the Society was only interested in proselytism, stating that of the 4400 who attended their schools only 90 were Protestants that 70 % of their schools were in Catholic Connaught with none in Protestant Ulster. Their method of spreading the gospel was to send preachers throughout the country to distribute Bible and religious tracts and then set up schools which could be attended free. 2.4 There was also a Sunday School Society, founded in 1809 which although it limited itself in its early years to providing spelling books and books of religious instruction, claimed to have 150,000 children in its schools in 1825. Dowling argues that many Catholics were forced to send their children to the schools of these societies, knowing they were exposing their children to intensive evangelisation because their landlords insisted, under the threat of eviction that they should.2.5

The Society that initially found most favour with Catholics was the Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in Ireland, or as it was more commonly known, the Kildare Place Society, after the address of its headquarters in Dublin. The Society arose out of a religiously neutral school which was established for the poor in Dublin, although its religious neutrality did not prevent the Bible being read in it every day. The school became popular, it being estimated that it attracted 1,000 children in daily attendance. Its success caught the attention of some of Dublin’s more influential citizens who on the principles of the school founded the society named above. Its second resolution stated ‘that for the accomplishment of the “great work” of educating the Irish poor, its schools should be based upon the most liberal principles and should be devoid of all sectarian distinctions in Christianity. 2.6 The 14th Report of the 1806 - 1812 Commission on Education (Ireland was to be plagued with Royal Commissions and Select Committees on Education throughout the 19th century) recommended the creation of a national system of education for the poor. At first, it was thought that such a system could be achieved through the medium of the various school societies, so when in 1816 the Society approached the government for a grant it received the sum of £6,000. This grant was incremented and renewed annually until 1831 when it had risen to £30,000. Considering that the first parliamentary grant for English education was not made until 1833 and only totalled £20,000, this indicates the level of official support lying behind the activities of this Society.

Unlike the other Societies it did not subordinate its educational activities to its proselytising ambitions and for this reason it received the approval of lay Catholics and the benevolent neutrality of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. Daniel O’Connell was on the Society’s Board of Managers, Catholic gentry became patrons of individual schools and Catholic clergy gave cautious sanction to the Society’s activities. The Society took the educational aspect of its work seriously and although using the Lancasterian system developed several pioneering techniques which were later to be adopted by the national system. These included publishing a complete set of books for their schools, operating both male and female model schools at their Kildare Place headquarters and creating an efficient inspectorate.

Except for Catholic annoyance at the overwhelming Protestant majority on the Society’s management committee and their irritation at the scripture readings, things ran smoothly enough until 1819 when the underlying tensions began to surface. In 1819 O’Connell who was now becoming one of the most powerful men in Ireland, criticised the management of the society and urged modification of the rule regarding the Bible to assure its acceptance by all Catholics. In 1820, he moved that a committee of seven be formed to inquire if the rules of the society were effective, but lost the vote and resigned. He may, for tactical reasons have manoeuvred his resignation as after that an Irish National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor was established in 1821; but if so, the Society played into his hands by beginning in 1820 to grant part of its income to other educational societies, all of which aroused Catholic antipathy because of their flagrant proselytising; giving grants to 57 schools of the Association for the discountenancing Vice etc., 340 schools of the London Hibernian Society and 30 schools of the Baptist Society. In addition, after 1820 local Protestant clergy and landlords freely violated the Society’s rules by providing exposition of the scriptures. The Society became just another Protestant Bible Society.

The Irish National Society was led by the Catholic Hierarchy; it was modeled on the Kildare Place Society and tried to get a share of the latter’s parliamentary grant, but it was foiled by the Secretary of State being replaced by one less sympathetic to its aims. The struggle now entered the field of the wider national politics by being taken up by O’Connell’s Catholic Association. O’Connell with the aid of the Church made a survey of the provision of Catholic education throughout the country and plagued parliament with petitions on Catholic education and for state aid for Catholic schools. Pressure was also exerted from other quarters. Rev. John McHale who was to prove one of the most inflexible protagonists of both the nationalist and Vatican lines, then a priest in Maynooth began a series of articles, under the nom-de-plume of “Hierophilis” which ran for three years in the press, warning the clergy of the insidious schemes of the Kildare Place Society. His campaign was reinforced when in 1819, Cardinal Fontana, Prefect of Congregatio de propaganda fide i.e. the Vatican Committee responsible for missions, sent a letter to the Irish bishops condemning Bible Societies. In 1820 this condemnation was repeated.

The entire Catholic Hierarchy condemned the system and through Grattan, who after the Union of Parliaments in 1801 had made Catholic emancipation his main cause in Parliament, presented a petition to Parliament about their educational grievances which mentioned the lack of grants to Catholic schools, the larger grants to the Kildare Place Society and the rules of the Lord Lieutenants’ educational fund which operated to their detriment. The upshot of all this was that Parliament agreed to appoint a commission to investigate Irish education. The Commission sat from 1824 to 1827 hearing evidence from all quarters and issued nine reports summarizing what they heard and the conclusions they had drawn. One person interviewed was Archbishop Murray, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, who was asked if Catholics would object to both Catholic and Protestant pupils having common literary (i.e. non-religious) instruction from a Protestant master, said there would be no objection, nor would there be any objection to a Catholic layman giving religious instruction. A school could have both Catholic and Protestant masters each giving literary instruction, but he refused to accept Catholic and Protestant children reading scripture in their respective versions during these hours of common instruction.

The Commission proposed the setting up of a national system under a Parliamentary Board. This Board was to maintain the title of all school houses under its jurisdiction, control all monies applied to maintenance, no matter from what source, hire inspectors, be the sole authority in appointing and dismissing schoolmasters and of admitting and rejecting books for other than religious instruction. The Commission also suggested that the Board should issue Protestants scholars with an authorized version of the New Testament and Catholic scholars with a Douay Version. Also, a volume of extracts suitable to all faiths was to be prepared from the Gospels, Proverbs and Pentateuch to be used in the periods of combined instruction. The Report of the Commission pleased the Catholic laity as obviously, it placed Catholic education on the same level as that of Protestants, but it did not please the Bishops and O’Connell, the one Catholic layman who could have forced a decision, left educational matters to them. The Bishops wanted a Catholic headmaster in a school where there was a Catholic majority and Catholic teachers to be appointed only with the approval of their Bishop. The Bishops also wanted to have jurisdiction over the choice of books to be used in the periods of separate religious instruction. They also asked for a Catholic model school to be set up in each province and objected to transferring titles to the board and threatened to withhold their assent if their demands were not met. The Board managed to get a Douay Version of the New Testament that satisfied the Catholic Bishops, but the scheme foundered because neither the Roman Catholic Church nor Anglican Bishops could agree on a harmonised version of the Gospel.

After this the 1824 - 1827 Commission was superseded by a Select Committee of 21 M.P.’s who recommended that a new Board of Education be set up, with salaried members appointed by the government without religious distinction. This Board was to allocate all grants, superintend a model school and publish all books, including books used in the separate religious period. They also recommended that Parliamentary money should be granted to aid local parishes or societies to erect school houses, to provide books or help pay teachers. Local citizens were to grant the site of the school and underwrite onethird of the building costs, buy the school books and pay the master a salary of not less than £10 per annum. Four days of the school should be devoted to secular instruction, the other two days were to be set aside for religious instruction: one day for Catholics, the other for Protestants; the Protestant religious instruction being given by a Church of Ireland or Presbyterian minister, the Catholic one by a priest. Teachers, to be selected without religious distinction, should be graduates of or be certificated by the model school and produce a certificate of moral conduct and character from their respective clergy.