Teaching Irish Independence: History in Irish Schools, 1922-72

This book examines the role of history teaching in Irish secondary schools in the period 1922-72. It assesses what objectives were the most important in history teaching and what interests school history was designed to serve. The emphasis is on the political, cultural, social and economic factors that determined the content of the history curriculum and its development. The primary focus is on the politics and policy of history teaching, including the respective contributions of church and state to the formulation of the history programmes. It is argued that a particular view of Ireland’s past as a Gaelic, Catholic-nationalist one informed the ideas of policy makers and thus provided the basis of state education policy, and history teaching specifically. The conclusion drawn is that history teaching was used by elite interest groups, namely the state and the church, in the service of their own interests. It was used to justify the state’s existence and employed as an instrument of religious education. History was exploited in the pursuit of the objectives of the cultural revival movement, being used to legitimise the restoration of Irish as a spoken language.