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Patrick Pearse, teacher, poet, and one of the executed leaders of the 1916 Rising has long been a central figure in Irish history. The book provides a radically new interpretation of Patrick Pearse's work in education, and examines how his work as a teacher became a potent political device in pre-independent Ireland. The book provides a complete account of Pearse's educational work at St. Enda's school, Dublin where a number of insurgents such as William Pearse, Thomas McDonagh and Con Colbert taught. The author draws upon the recollections of past-pupils, employees, descendants of those who worked with Pearse, founders of schools inspired by his work - including the descendants of Thomas McSweeny and Louis Gavan Duffy – and a vast array or primary source material to provide a comprehensive account of life at St. Enda's and the place of education within the 'Irish-Ireland' movement and the struggle for independence.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780752498614 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 06/19/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
| Age Range: | 12 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Boy Republic
Patrick Pearse and Radical Education
By Brendan Walsh
The History Press
Copyright © 2013 Brendan WalshAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9861-4
CHAPTER 1
Who was Patrick Pearse?
AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL
Patrick Pearse was the first son of James Pearse (1839–1900) and Margaret Brady (1887–1932). They had four children, Margaret (1878–1968), Patrick (1879–1916), William (1881–1916), and Mary Brigid (1884–1947). Patrick Pearse began attending Westland Row Christian Brothers School in 1891, and between 1893 and 1896 sat four Intermediate Examinations. He enjoyed school and remembered that he 'learned quickly' having 'no recollection of any effort.' According to his mother he was 'exceedingly fond of study', and upon leaving school his 'whole ambition was to teach boys.' Mary Brigid remembered him as 'exceedingly studious' and, even in his teens, possessing 'every attribute of the perfect teacher', while Eamonn O'Neill, who attended Westland Row along with Pearse, remembered him as a 'great reader.'
He was influenced by the political radicalism of his father, James, who held strong non-conformist sympathies. James's small library reflected liberal and independent-minded views and included essays of radical thinkers and colonial history. The adolescent Pearse was an avid reader and undoubtedly took an interest in his father's books. Pearse's grandfather had been politically liberal and his mother, Margaret, was a Unitarian. Radicalism and free-thinking, therefore, were characteristic of Pearse's paternal lineage, while his mother's ancestry was characterised by a spirit of separatist nationalism.
Much of what we know about Pearse's youth comes from an unfinished autobiographical sketch and the memories of his family, in Mary Brigid's The Home Life of Pádraig Pearse, published in 1934. To a contemporary reader, these recollections bear the stamp of an adoring family and are little more than hagiography, written at a time when the public was willing to accept such memories at face value. For the historian they are useful, but must be approached with the usual critical stance necessary when reading biography. This is even more important when the authors are family and the subject a national hero, executed for his part in his country's fight for freedom. The cautions of historical methodologies aside, we cannot expect a critical, detached account of Pearse from his sister and mother. We certainly cannot expect it in the Ireland of 1934, when the fallen leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising were held in almost religious awe and former insurgents filled the front and back benches of Dáil Eireann. Mary Brigid's book, and its contributors, pre-date the post-modern uncertainties of our times and it is unfair to look to it for anything beyond what it supplies; an affectionate, uncritical account of some aspects of Pearse's life. Yet, the book contains accounts by those who knew Pearse well and cannot, therefore, be ignored by those wishing to write about its subject.
Indeed, the home life of Pearse throws much light on his adult personality. His sculptor father evidently associated with artists, some of whom made nude drawings of the young Pearse. On these occasions he would lie 'without [his] clothes in the warmth of the fire', composing stories for himself: 'Some of the longest stories I ever made up ... where made up while a man was making a picture of me stretched on my face with my chin resting on my hands.' This was not uncharacteristic of the late Victorian and Edwardian view of pre-pubescent children as being unsullied and symbolic of an unworldly purity. The artistic, but not bohemian, influence of Pearse's father was countered by his mother, whose great-grandfather had fought in the 1798 Rebellion and whose brother was hanged for treason. His great-aunt Margaret would tell him stories of Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tome and 'had herself known the Fenians'. Undoubtedly, this old woman had a profound influence upon the young Pearse and he prized her tales of the Fianna and patriots above all others. But Pearse's convert father was a nationalist in the tradition of Parnell, fair-minded and reasonable; what Edwards called 'the best kind of decent Englishman'. He was a stolid Edwardian, devoting his energies to a successful monumental carving business, with modest investments in shares and an interest in liberal thought. In this last aspect he was the opposite of his wife, and it was her influence that dominated Pearse's youth. James died when Patrick was twenty-one, and throughout his extensive writings there is barely a mention of him, although the theme of motherhood appears repeatedly.
Pearse believed that the combination of the 'widely remote traditions' of his parents made him the 'strange thing I am'. Only on one other occasion does he make reference to the complexity of his personality. Indeed, what is most striking when one begins to write about Pearse is how different he was from the very earnest figure of the popular imagination. His family, for example, repeatedly refer to his sense of humour and largeness of personality. Although the historian treats these recollections with caution, others too remembered him as cheerful and genial, albeit occasionally withdrawn and introspective. As a child he was possessed with a vivid imagination and would fill his days playing at being a Shakespearian hero, military general or priest. Willie and Brigid enjoyed his antics and Edwards' claim that 'to a child as romantic as Patrick, family life must have been suffocatingly dull ...' is simply not supported by family recollections and certainly never hinted at by Pearse. Mary Bulfin attended St Ita's and recalled that one afternoon Pearse regaled the girls with stories about his own schooldays, and while he himself did not laugh aloud he had 'a queer little secret smile that made one feel he was having a great chuckle away down inside in himself.'
His mother and sister Brigid remember him bustling about the house, late for appointments, his reluctance to get out of bed in the morning, his brief flirtation with vegetarianism and his passion for opera. According to Brigid, in later years he attended 'every opera that came to Dublin, Wagner's heavy works being his particular favourites.' He was energetic, playful and somewhat pompous, but outside of the family could be shy and serious. Eamonn O'Neill, who was at school with Pearse, described him as 'extremely reserved at school', and although Patrick's cousin Alfred McGloughlin described him as unathletic, he joined both the school boxing and football teams. He was also prominent in the school debating society – an aspect of school life he encouraged at St Enda's. Pearse worked hard at school and quickly gained a reputation as a fine orator and, according to O'Neill, his peers 'liked and respected him'. He was, in short, a diligent, earnest and perhaps over-serious schoolboy. He appears to have been self-conscious but, at the age of sixteen, to have quickly developed a confident grasp of public speaking, when he and others formed the New Ireland Literary Society – a forum for discussing aspects of Irish literature. Unlike others who write of their schooldays, Pearse fails to mention friends and one is left with the impression that his maintained a certain distance from his peers and revealed his true self at home, rather than socially. Certainly, his brother Willie was his closest confidant and friend throughout his life.
As a young man, Pearse was a cultural nationalist. Irish historian Mary Hayden remembers that, when she first knew him, he had little interest in politics, and despite the attempts of later generations to associate him with a particular and narrow type of Catholicism, she remarks that he 'seldom spoke' of religion. Indeed, regarding schooling, Pearse was frequently critical of the Catholic hierarchy, religious-run schools, and the Christian Brothers in particular. In an Ireland where Religious Orders had a monopoly over secondary schooling, Pearse's school was managed and operated by lay persons.
Upon leaving secondary school, Pearse acted as a monitor – a type of junior assistant teacher – at Westland Row Christian Brothers' School. Perhaps it was this experience as a monitor that helped form his earliest thoughts on the individualistic and competitive secondary school system. Westland Row was made up of middle-and working-class boys. Pearse's father's occupation as a monumental sculptor meant that he was 'trade', but being self-employed and an artisan he belonged to the lower middle-class. The Christian Brothers were renowned for no-nonsense, examination-driven teaching and their schools often provided a direct route into white-collar employment; the Civil Service in particular. Since the mid-nineteenth century their schools have been held in high esteem and while Pearse set out to create a distinctly middle-class school in Rathfarnham, Brothers schools throughout Ireland catered for those less fortunate than the St Enda's boys. Nonetheless, for the young, sensitive bibliophile, the cramming and competition must have been anathema and, given his later criticism of the Brothers' methods, must have earned his silent disapproval. The regime in Westland Row, as in other secondary schools, was one of grinding preparation for the Intermediate Examinations. The final examination was a high-stake affair; schools published their successes in the daily newspapers and vied with one another in the hope of attracting enrolments. Prior to the Intermediate Education Act 1878, schools did not benefit from direct funding (see Chapter Two). In order to sidestep the unpalatable prospect of funding denominational schools in Ireland, the Act allowed schools to secure funding through the awarding of cash prizes for examination success. As a result, the Intermediate Examination – the ancestor of the present high-stake Leaving Certificate – became an annual ordeal for schools and a spectator sport for the public. When first held, in the summer of 1879 – the year of Pearse's birth – The Irish Times described the contest as an 'intellectual tilt and tournament', with 5,000 pupils entering 'the lists'. It was this element of competition, the hot-housing of individuals that many schools, particularly the Christian Brothers', excelled at. But the schools cannot be blamed. They were the victims of a terminal examination system in which the public had 'an almost superstitious reverence' and which parents understood as the best chance of securing a fighting chance for their children in the labour market. This was the system that Pearse baulked at, but at which, as a pupil, he was highly successful.
While in no way exceptional, he operated well within the system and gained the required marks to allow him to enter the Royal University of Ireland two years later. He studied English, French and Celtic (Irish) and was considered an excellent student. Eamonn O'Neill who also attended Westland Row remembered him as 'a grave, sweet, silent boy', who never joined in 'the ordinary games at playtime' but 'often climbed up on the high window-ledge of the schoolroom and sat there reading.' Edwards makes the point that, at Westland Row, he would not have developed any ability to read critically; the requirements of the intermediate rendering any such luxury superfluous. But one suspects that Pearse's romantic imagination also prevented much analysis. During his mid and late teens he read, almost exclusively, Irish myths and legends – printed versions of what his great-aunt Margaret had told him in childhood. On winning a book-prize at the Senior Grade Intermediate in 1896 he chose Thomas Flannery's For the Tongue of the Gael, a book of essays on contemporaneous Irish writing – a choice that would appear to undermine the view that he was disinterested in critical aspects of Irish literature. However, his later writings indicate that he was unaware of the analytical work being done by scholars, such as Kuno Meyer, for example. Edwards is correct when she notes that as Pearse grew older, he read the tales with a 'childish wonder' that would have 'shaken the sophisticated and subtle Douglas Hyde'.
The grinding contestation Pearse endured at school was shared by thousands of boys and girls, but few founded a school that offered a strident alternative. As we shall see later, Pearse set out to establish a school that would challenge the entire Intermediate System. This was Pearse's way; he was a man of action. Not content as a teenager with the lack of highbrow literary discussion in Dublin he was a founder member of the New Ireland Literary Society. Edwards calls the title and the circular announcing its establishment 'pretentious' – a forgivable trait in earnest young literary men. The sixteen-year-old Pearse, president of the society, demonstrated an ignorance of European and contemporary Irish literature that was not uncharacteristic of most boys of his age. Drilled in the intermediate texts he had little capacity for discernment, and his addresses were not unlike those that appeared as essays in school annuals of the period: enthusiastic rather than insightful. But this is not to underestimate his commitment to starting something new. Regardless of its juvenile nature, the society was, at least, an attempt to address what Pearse considered the absence of literary and debating societies in Dublin. This spirit manifested itself again in a wholly different and less conventional matter two years later, when, aged eighteen, he publicly noted the 'poor support' which the Irish clergy had extended to the Irish language revival.
The schoolboy Pearse was, then, hardworking, earnest, reserved, successful in examinations and an avid, if unadventurous, reader. His success at school is demonstrated in the Brothers asking him to act as a monitor at Westland Row upon leaving school. Although, given Pearse's dislike of their method and later trenchant criticisms of the Intermediate Examination, one wonders at their doing so. He must, as a teenager, have given the impression that were he to become a teacher, he would fit the mould perfectly. At home, Pearse was outgoing, fun-loving and busy. It would be tempting to conclude that this indicated a type of split personality but what it in fact reflects is that Pearse was, in all respects, a not untypical, socially shy teenage boy; a fact he attested to himself in later life. After his father's death he became responsible for the family and there is no doubt that the affection of his family had prepared him for this transition. But Pearse's schooling tells us nothing about him other than the rather uninteresting fact that he was, in all respects, a rather ordinary schoolboy.
However, Pearse was an extraordinary adult and the object of this book is to tell the story of his adult life in teaching rather than to provide a general biography. He was, first and foremost, a teacher and a school principal. Pearse did not join the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) until 1914, but since 1908 he had operated St Enda's School. It is not surprising, but it is a scholarly injustice, that a full-scale study of his educational work has not previously appeared. However, historians have written about aspects of this work and before we consider Pearse and St Enda's in detail, we will look at these valuable contributions and what they add to our knowledge of Patrick Pearse.
READING ABOUT PEARSE
Traditionally, Pearse's educational work has been regarded as forward-looking and enlightened, given the period in which he worked as a teacher. However, the view that he was 'at his peak as a theoretical educationalist' cannot be simply taken for granted. Again, given his trenchant criticism of schooling in Ireland under British rule, his work must be examined within the context of education at the period, which, it turns out, was far less restrictive than Pearse claimed. Pearse was also less than generous in recognising innovations in the school curriculum that closely resembled those he weekly advocated in the pages of An Claimeadh Soluis – the journal of the Gaelic League.
Again, Pearse's criticisms cannot be properly understood without reference to primary and intermediate schooling in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the contemporary reports of school inspectors, along with official and commissioned reports, provide a wonderfully detailed context against which his criticisms can be understood and examined. Pearse's work on the teaching of Irish is much neglected but gave rise to the development of sensible teaching approaches, which reveal a firm grasp of sound methodology. His emphasis upon the language as a spoken medium in many ways foreshadows modern understandings of language acquisition and this book details his work on behalf of the language in schools and as a compulsory subject for matriculation to the National University of Ireland.
Our main focus, however, is Pearse's work at St Enda's and St Ita's, although little is known about the latter. Gertrude Bloomer, who acted as headmistress at the school, did not keep thorough records and the school's short existence means that first-hand accounts are rare. However, a strong relationship existed between the staff and pupils of both schools, helping to disperse the myth of Pearse's shyness in the company of women and shed light upon his understanding of the nature and purpose of schooling. Yet this understanding, while often progressive, was motivated by political rather than pedagogical concerns, and within it nestle ambiguities. For example, St Enda's was similar to the model of English boarding schools typified by Rugby in England, or Clongowes Wood and Castleknock College in Ireland. Indeed, Pearse consciously imitated these to promote St Enda's and simply inverted, or substituted, the ethos to create a 'gaelic' school. This is fairly typical of school founders, but the dissenting nature of Pearse's work is not immediately apparent until examined within the broader field of educational history. In other words, Pearse set out to undo the system of the time and replace it with a new model of schooling – quite a radical project. His intention was to create a school that would be stridently defiant of the type operating at the time and to offer an alternative, modelled upon an eclectic mix of Irish Ireland/Gaelic League aspirations; the notion of fosterage; elements of the public school ethos; and influenced by the heroic models of Cúchulainn and Robert Emmet. In short, a very personal, if not idiosyncratic, project but absolutely typical of school founders whose undertakings are informed by strongly held beliefs. Pearse's work was complex; while harking back to the past it was also modern and radical and it is not surprising that it finds echoes in the work of founders, such as Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) and Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), and in the work of radical theorists, such as Paulo Freire (1921–1997) and Henry Giroux (b. 1943).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Boy Republic by Brendan Walsh. Copyright © 2013 Brendan Walsh. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title,Foreword by Declan Kiberd,
Introduction,
One Who was Patrick Pearse?,
Two The Evolution of Schooling in Ireland,
Three The Tongue of the Gael,
Four Emmet's Ghost: The Boy Republic of St Edna's,
Five The Murder Machine: Schooling as Resistance,
Six Why Pearse Matters,
Bibliography,
Plates,
Copyright,