University of Galway History Research Seminar: Teaching the nation’s past: Irish history in secondary schools, 1924-69

University of Galway History Research Seminar:

Teaching the nation’s past: Irish history in secondary schools, 1924-69

Dr Colm Mac Gearailt (University of Galway) 

Achoimre/Abstract:

What we teach shows what we value. This talk considers the version(s) of the past set for study, taught in schools, and learned by students in the Irish Free State and beyond. It tracks history as a subject, and specifically Irish history within this, from 1924, when the Department of Education was first founded, until 1969, and the period of ‘modernisation’. As part of this investigation, it examines three key research questions: Firstly, what Irish history was taught, how it was taught, and why? Secondly, what cultural and political ideologies influenced the teaching of Irish history during this period? Finally, how did policy and official rhetoric relate to practice, and the reality of history at school-level.  It contends that a narrative of Irish history was promoted in secondary schools which tended to focus on a traditional ‘Great Man’ approach to history with a strong emphasis on high politics, and on religion. This narrative was not as simplistic however as previously assumed. By taking the differing emphases in the major textbooks into account, and appreciating how the Certificate examinations were not solely focussed on promoting a militant version of Irish Catholic history, it challenges the received understanding of Irish history as taught in secondary schools during the period under investigation.

 Biography

Dr Colm Mac Gearailt completed his IRC-funded PhD, entitled ‘Teaching the Nation’s Past: Irish History in Secondary Schools, 1924-69’ at Trinity College Dublin in 2019. He has lectured on the History of Education with Marino Institute of Education, Hibernia College, and with TCD. In 2022 he completed a post-doctoral research position with SEALBHÚ, DCU, where he conducted an Early Enactment Review of the Junior Cycle Irish Curriculum Specifications (L1 and L2), on behalf of the NCCA. During his PhD, Mac Gearailt also translated the autobiographies of Earnáin de Blaghad from Irish to English, which were subsequently used towards the late Prof. David Fitzpatrick’s Ernest Blythe: A Double Life (Cork 2018). He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at University of Galway, on the ‘CARTLANN: Gníomhaíochas, teanga agus na meáin’ project; a study of the Conradh na Gaeilge archives, specifically considering language activism, the Irish language, and the media in the twentieth century. The research is funded by The HEA North-South Research Programme 2021, under the Shared Island Initiative. He is a published poet, and has also worked in television.

Registration

This is a hybrid event. The paper will be delivered in-person, in Room G010, Hardiman Research Building, University of Galway (ground floor) and livestreamed simultaneously on Zoom: https://universityofgalway-ie.zoom.us/j/98107440319.

Seminars are not recorded.

To attend via Zoom, please register at: https://forms.office.com/e/d7Bg2N2gCg 

This talk is part of the University of Galway History Seminar series.

Image: detail from the cover of Mark Tierney and Margaret MacCurtain, The birth of modern Ireland (1969).