Madam, – May I add some more detail to Patrick F O’Donovan’s interesting Irishman’s Diary (April 4th) on Edward Stanley’s Education Act of 1831?
No doubt enormous good was done by the establishment of a national school system, but there were problems. As Mr O’Donovan says, the board set up to administer the scheme “would have absolute control over funds” to, amongst other things “produce suitable textbooks”. However, there were no textbooks in Irish, which was the language of the majority of the children attending these schools. A catechism in Irish was available but carried the disclaimer that the book should only be used to instruct the native Irish “as a means for obtaining an accurate knowledge of English”, but must not be used “to make the Irish language a vehicle for the communication of general knowledge”.
This attitude towards the language of the majority was not a new thing, and lives on to the present day. A former commissioner of education, Prof George Fitzgerald, wrote to Douglas Hyde in 1899, “I shall use all my influence, as in the past, to ensure that Irish as a spoken language shall die out as quickly as possible”.
It might also be worth mentioning that the schools founded in Ireland by chief secretary Stanley taught English history, but not Irish history. – Yours, etc,