Education I
Summary
of chapter. Education was traditionally associated with the
Churches, but it was also in the nineteenth century seen as something in which
laymen could have a place. The clergy of all the Churches strenuously opposed
this view. For various reasons the Government in Ireland got drawn into
assisting in the provision of schools, and invariably tried to ensure that
bodies which received Government money should be managed on inclusive and
non-sectarian lines. It had scant success. In fact, it was not until the
beginning of the twentieth century that it managed to establish technical
schools unconnected with any Church.
(i) General Considerations
(ii) Educational Theories
(iii) Primary Education before the National Schools
(iv) Other Schools Connected with the Churches
(v) Secondary Schools: Boys
(vi) Secondary Schools: Girls
(vii) Technical Schools
(viii) University Education
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(i) General Considerations.
The subject of the history of
education is interesting in itself. But study of this particular period shows
how the relentless campaign waged by the Catholic clergy on the subject of
education originated.
The subject of education is a very
complicated one. Since the Middle Ages it has been
pursued at three levels commonly called primary, secondary, and tertiary. Often
it was left to private individuals, but often too Governments and the Churches
were involved. Nor was there ever a consensus about the meaning of education or
about what should be taught in schools. Education was of enormous importance in
early nineteenth-century Ireland. We are
concerned only with formal education in schools, not with the craft skills
taught to apprentices in the various professions and trades.
In general, we may say that primary
education was concerned with the teaching of reading and writing. Religious
schools or teachers often added the teaching of religion. Secondary or grammar
school education was chiefly concerned with the teaching the grammar of the
Latin and Greek languages. There were also some mercantile schools that taught
arithmetic and book-keeping, and these subjects could also be taught as extras
in grammar schools. Girls' secondary schools could teach Latin, but modern
languages were often found more appropriate as girls did not attend
universities. Tertiary education was taught chiefly in universities, but
lawyers and doctors had their own professional training. In the universities
traditionally philosophy, divinity, law, and medicine were taught, but more
modern subjects were added from time to time. [Top]
(ii)
Educational Theories
For
most schoolteachers teaching reading and writing was just a means of earning a
living, but there were some who were considering the theory of education. By
the year 1800 the use of schools as an official instrument of proselytising had
been abandoned.
Considerable
thought had been given in the eighteenth century regarding the best method of
educating youth. Dr. Thomas Sheridan, father of Richard Brinsley
Sheridan, opened a school on modern lines in 1757 in which the teaching of
English was placed on a par with the teaching of Latin. One of the earliest
discussions on the subject that was begun in the eighteenth century concerned
the desirability of a 'National system of education'. This phrase had a
different meaning from the one it eventually acquired. By a national system was
meant one aimed at promoting the benefit of the nation. A compulsory system of
education could be devised which would produce better farmers, better artisans,
better soldiers, and so on. Adam Smith saw some merit in the proposal, but only
for the poorer classes. The Irish Secretary, Thomas Orde,
raised the question in 1787 but nothing came of it. The question was again
brought before the Irish Parliament by Richard Lovell Edgeworth,
and one of the last acts of the Irish Parliament was to approve of it in
principle. After the Union the idea was
dropped.
Edgeworth was however also inclined to favour the contrary
principle advocated by Rousseau. The
latter believed that education should be for the benefit of the child, not the
state, and no child should be forced to learn what the state wanted to teach
him. Edgeworth tried out Rousseau's theory on one of
his numerous children but was only partially satisfied with the result. But
Rousseau profoundly affected his ideas, and those of his daughter Maria.
There was great opposition to Rousseau's
theory from the clergy of all denominations for they all believed that man's
nature was 'fallen' and that his instincts led naturally to evil not good.
(This was not necessarily the view of medieval theologians like Thomas Aquinas
but it was almost universal at the time.) The clergy consequently believed in a
need to curb vices and encourage good habits. All theorists at the time were
however opposed to corporal punishment in schools, though they believed in
systems of rewards and punishments. Corporal punishment came back into favour
about 1840.
At
the beginning of the century the Edgeworths became
acquainted with the theories of Pestalozzi the Swiss
educator, and discussed his methods with him after the Peace of Amiens in 1802.
It would seem that though no one theory of education was to predominate in
progressive schools in Ireland the ideas of
Pestalozzi were the most influential. He believed
that education should develop the whole child through physical, moral, and
physical instruction. (He never developed the physical education and this was
not introduced into schools until later in the century and then under Swedish
influence.) He believed that all teachers should be trained in the art of
teaching, and he personally trained the first teachers in his schools. He
considered that children should not be forced to learn but should be
encouraged, and therein lay the art of teaching. Many of his ideas can be found
in the principles adopted by the Kildare Place Society and by the National
Board.
Meanwhile
two British educators were developing their rival theories and systems of
education, and much debate on education in England was between
their respective followers. They were Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell and the
struggle between them was called the struggle between 'Bel and the Dragon'
(Daniel 14; Apocrypha in Revised Standard Version.)
Andrew
Bell was a High Churchman, who strongly believed that education was primarily
for the benefit of religion and so should be placed exclusively in the hands of
the clergy of the Established Church. He consequently believed in a national
system with the clergy in control. Education he conceived as filling up a
child's mind with facts he ought to know, and so believed in rote learning. He
thought that children should not be educated above their station. His methods
were not well worked out at first, but came to resemble those of
Lancaster.
Joseph
Lancaster believed in religious education but not one directed exclusively by
the clergy of one Church. He considered that children of all denominations
should be educated together, and given a general Christian education, but that
the particular tenets of each Church should be taught by the pastors of that
Church. He also believed in giving as much education as possible to each child,
and taught arithmetic to all. He looked on the school as the equivalent of a
factory for the production of education, and devised a production system with
the older children helping to instruct the younger children. His schools were
organised on a quasi-military system with a gradation of ranks that caused 'the
whole establishment to assume an orderly, animated, and very striking
appearance'. Lancaster visited Ireland to explain
his views, and these were largely adopted by the Kildare Place Society, and the
National Board, especially with regard to the teaching of religion.
Most
of the clergy of the Irish Established Church favoured the system of
Bell, and
considered that all education should be placed in their hands. The Irish
Catholic bishops who opposed to the National Schools also supported the
theories of Bell, but felt
that the Catholic clergy should be given the exclusive supervision at least of
Catholic children. [Top]
(iii) Primary
Education before the National Schools
Primary
education was developing rapidly early in the century. There was little
educational theory, the aim being to teach the arts of reading and writing, or
as it was sometimes put 'the three R's' reading, writing, and religion.
A
person could only open a school with the permission of the Protestant bishop of
the diocese and of the rector of the Established Church, but this was largely
ignored in practice. Since 1793 Catholics were allowed to open schools and
Catholic and Protestant teachers opened schools in large numbers. The
distribution of the schools can be illustrated by the figures of adult literacy
in 1841 for the various counties. This indicates the teaching of literacy over
the previous forty years. Illiteracy was lowest in Antrim, a very Protestant
county where only 21% of males and 23% of females could not read. The highest
rates of illiteracy were found in county
Mayo where 73% of
males and 87% of females were unable to read.
In
1823 the Protestant archdiocese of Armagh claimed to
have 'parish schools' in 79 of its parishes, but none in the remaining 17. A
parish school however just meant one that was officially approved by the
rector. There could be other 'pay schools' in the parish, and it is possible
that the 17 parishes without official pay-schools were in the southern or
Catholic end of the diocese, and there may have been Catholic pay-schools in
these. It was estimated in 1825 that there were 10,000 schools in Ireland, less than
half of them twelve years old. But the distribution of these schools was very
lopsided. In the parish of Bray on the east coast there were twenty schools in
the parish (though not all of them were open all the year) and from the data
given we have we can make some calculations. The average enrolment in the
schools in Bray was 40 pupils. If we took this as a national average we would
get an enrolment of 400,000. (Other estimates are ranged from 500,000 to
600,000 - Lyons. A different
parish in Louth had 9 schools with an average of 32 pupils.) As the entire population was about 7,000,000,
and assuming that a quarter of the population was between 4 and 14, we could
conclude that a quarter of all chidden went to school. The national variation
was between 80% and 20% attendance at school, and Wicklow on the east coast was
likely to have a higher than average attendance.
Dr James Doyle noted (about 1830) that the
situation was pretty desperate in Connaught and (the
Catholic parts of) Ulster. The
correlation between schools and literacy cannot be pressed too far however.
Doyle noted that scarcely half of the Catholic children ever attended school,
but most of those who did profited little. In the counties of Carlow, Kildare,
and Queen's County, nearly all the Catholic children attended school in the
summer months, but the schools were mere huts. But Doyle considered that nine
tenths of the children of farmers and the better-off in rural areas received
very defective instruction from masters incompetent to teach. The children of
the very poor received no instruction at all. Doyle considered this typical of Leinster and
Munster, and was
speaking only of Catholic children. The situation was somewhat better in the
towns. In the Gaelic-speaking cottier regions of the West even a penny-a-week
school was inconceivable (Fitzpatrick).
We
have a detailed description of the schools in Bray that provides an
illuminating picture of the better schools before the introduction of National
Education. Its twenty schools had an average enrolment of 40 pupils. The
teachers in 15 of the schools were Catholics. Thirteen schools did not open in
the winter. All the teachers had good character references, but none was
connected with any Education or Bible Society, and none were trained. One third
of the pupils were Protestants. All the schools were pay-schools, and the
average income of the teachers came to £16 10/-. Any suitable room or house was
used as a schoolroom. The local parish priest regarded a room 20 feet by 15 as
adequate for 40 children. Some schools had benches or forms; others lacked
these. We can work out that the average cost to parents was about 2½ pence per
child per week. A Forty-Shilling Freeholder would not have much change if he
had four children at school for 40 weeks each year. (Some religious orders in
Dublin managed to
run schools at one penny per child per week.)
The
chief books used were also listed. These included Murray's Reader and Murray's English
Grammar, Black’s Classbook and Preceptor, Gough's
Arithmetic, Voster's Arithmetic, Goldsmith's Geography,
Goldsmith's England, and
Jackson's Book-keeping.
These were the standard schoolbooks at the time. The Rev Thomas Dyck had invented school textbooks early in the eighteenth
century, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century a good range of books
was available. The books were all produced haphazardly as private speculations,
and the quality of none of them seems to have been good. The children's
parents, some of whom were illiterate, provided the books, perhaps buying them
from a chapman or pedlar.
Other books found in the schools of Bray were Robinson Crusoe, Anson's
Voyage, and Aesop’s Fables.
(There was a famous list complied over several years of unsuitable books found
in schoolchildren's hands. They included The
Life of Feeney the Robber and Defoe's Moll
Flanders, the Story of a Prostitute.)
John
Gough 1721-91 was an English Quaker who taught mostly in Ireland. Lindley Murray 1745-1826 of
Pennsylvania also a
Quaker worked in England, and
published an English Grammar and an English Reader. Oliver Goldsmith from
Longford, 1728 to 1774, wrote a History
of England and A history of the Earth
and Animated Nature.
William
Carleton gives a long description of what he called hedgeschools.
He contrasts them with the parish schools under the supervision of the rector
and with the later National Schools, and not always unfavourably. We do not
know if hedgeschools were more numerous than the
other kind such as were found in Bray taught by serious young men and women.
According
to Carleton, the hedgeschoolmasters taught a purely
secular culture in which religion was not mentioned. The masters were often men
of considerable learning, though some of them were charlatans. They all drank
heavily, were often drunk when teaching, and were noted for their brutality.
They were themselves products of hedgeschools,
staying on at school until nearly twenty, and at times were proficient in
Latin. The reading and writing of English only was taught. (Irish was taught
only in a few schools attached to Bible Societies.) For writing the pupil had
to provide his own equipment such as slate and cutter. The school slate
survived in Irish schools until the middle of the twentieth century. It
consisted of a rectangular piece of blue roofing slate about twelve inches by
seven surrounded with a wooden edge. The cutter was something with a sharp edge
for marking the slate. When the piece of writing was done the slate was wiped
clean. Children who used a quill-pen, ink and paper had to supply them themselves
and also a smooth board on which to rest the paper, for the pupils sat on
stones or on the ground. The master kept a sharp penknife for sharpening the
pens (Carleton). [Top]
(iv) Other Schools Connected with the Churches
There
were other schools subject to the Established Church, and receiving grants from
the Irish Parliament. These grants were continued after the Act of Union. Once
again it was alleged that the public was getting an inadequate return for the
monies spent. But when enquiry was made it was found that these schools were by
1800 for the most part orphanages and so responsible for sheltering, feeding,
clothing, and teaching each child in their care.
An
interesting group of these schools were those of the Incorporated Society, the
'Charter Schools'. The schools of the Society were begun in 1733 under the
direction of Hugh Boulter, archbishop of Armagh who secured
a charter for them. They represented the last attempt by the clergy of the
Established Church to convert the Catholics.
The schools were to teach Christian Knowledge, useful trades especially
in connection with the linen industry, and also agriculture and gardening, and
were to promote a spirit of true religion, labour, and industry (DEP 26 Feb 1734). Reading and writing
was certainly taught but not necessarily to all the children. Schools were to be set up in as many parishes
as possible, into each of which about twenty Catholic boys and an equal number
of girls would be taken to be educated as Protestants. Despite what was later
alleged, Catholic parents seemed to have been eager to get education, or at
least food and clothing for their children.
(At least that is what the Protestant papers of the time reported, and
there is no particular need to disbelieve the reports.) The children were all
to be provided with good clothing, and dry footwear, and were to be instructed
in the crafts suitable to rural life, digging the fields, gathering the crops,
cutting turf, milking cows, and spinning yarn. After an enthusiastic start they
seem to have become moribund. They are interesting for they represent one of
the very few attempts to proselytise through education, and also for the
emphasis they placed on teaching practical skills.
The
schools of the Bible Societies were not under the authority of any Church. They
aimed at providing a non-denominational education based almost exclusively on
reading the Bible. The Societies limited themselves to raising funds for hiring
schoolteachers, and the only condition they made was a willingness on the part
of the master or mistress to use the Bible as a textbook. The schools were
particularly numerous in parts of the West where parents could not afford even
a penny a week. They were fiercely resented by bishops like Archbishop MacHale
who spared no effort to get rid of them. It should be noted however, with
regard to using the Bible as a textbook 'without note or comment' even the
bishops of the Established Church felt it was impossible for a teacher to avoid
giving his own interpretation, and consequently that the direction of properly
trained and ordained clergymen was essential.
Various
religious Orders of men and women in the Catholic Church were founded in Ireland or
introduced from the Continent in the first half of the century. These usually
began by providing cheap penny-a-week schools in town or city parishes. These
were often financed from the profitable secondary schools. MacHale hoped to see
Catholic primary schools manned by teaching Sisters and Brothers in every rural
parish in Ireland, but this
was never likely to be feasible.
The
schools connected with the Kildare Place Society and the National Board will be
dealt with in a separate chapter. [Top]
(v) Secondary
Schools: Boys
Until
the year 1793 Protestants managed all grammar schools for boys but in that
year, following the Relief Act, Catholic schools for boys began to appear. At
the beginning of the century it was estimated that there were in Ireland 46 grammar
schools with a total enrolment of 1,200. If we include schools for girls, and
other schools where Latin was taught, the total numbers receiving secondary
education was perhaps twice that figure. So the total number receiving
secondary education in any given year would be under 5,000. Most of these too
probably did not complete a full course of five to six years, but a shorter one
of two to three years. We can compare these figures with the total enrolment in
'superior schools' in 1881 and 1911 of 20,000 and 40,000 respectively.
The
46 endowed grammar schools were connected more or less closely with the
Established Church. The endowments of land had come directly from the
Government, or from the Established Church, or from private individuals. Some
were established under a statute of Elizabeth I providing for the setting up of
grammar schools in the various dioceses. Diocesan schools were established in
18 dioceses. Others were begun under a statute of James I and these were called
Royal Schools. They were supposed to be free schools like Eton and Harrow but admitted
fee-paying pupils. Others were founded by private charities, the chief of which
was that of Erasmus Smith. The Bluecoat
Hospital in
Dublin was founded
under Charles II to provide education for the sons of poor freemen.
The
basic course of instruction consisted of Latin and Greek, but other subjects
like arithmetic, belles-lettres
(English literature), or modern languages, the 'useful and polite branches of
education' could be added. These latter could include mathematics,
book-keeping, geography, globes and maps, French, writing, accounts, music,
dancing, fencing, and drawing. It is impossible to say how many of these were
offered in each school, or were offered only as extras. The excessive
concentration on the classics was gone. There were no organised games, at least until Dr Arnold of Rugby in England introduced a
proper system of physical, mental and moral training. The boys lived in the
houses of the various masters, and were looked after by a housekeeper, and were
generally left to themselves to organise their own games and studies. Teaching
was done in a large room or schoolhouse in which the boys sat ranked according
to their forms. Each sat with his Latin or Greek textbook on his knee and
translated when told to do so by the master or assistant master.
With
regard to Latin and Greek some of the Protestant grammar schools produced
remarkably good results. The standards attained can be gauged by the
examinations an undergraduate at Trinity
College,
Dublin was expected
to face at the end of his first term. They were expected to be able to read two
named books of Homer and two of Virgil. This implies a considerable decline in
classical studies from the middle of the eighteenth century. Standards in Catholic
grammar schools were always lower throughout the century. At mid-century the
president of University
College, Galway considered
that four fifths of those applying ought by rights to be rejected if proper
standards were to be attained. (By the end of the century 56% of Protestant
male teachers had degrees and 30% of women teachers likewise. Among Catholic
teachers in secondary schools the figures were 11½% and 8% respectively (Lyons)).
Protestant
educationalists like Sir John Newport were concerned that the number of pupils
being educated in these schools was not commensurate with the size of their
public endowments. (This concern was not confined to Ireland, for in England too at the
end of the eighteenth century there were endowed schools with only a few token
pupils.) Two successive Parliamentary Commissions investigated the affairs of
these schools. These showed that as with all Church lands the return per acre
was far below what ordinary landowners received. Still, the royal school in Armagh (1627) had
1,530 acres attached to it, and even if the headmaster got only £1 an acre the
revenue would still have been considerable. By 1812 major abuses had been
corrected. As a result of the Reports of the Commissioners the Government
established a Board of Education in 1812 to supervise the endowed schools.
These schools, at every period, provided the best education in Ireland.
The
Presbyterians had no schools of their own until the end of the eighteenth
century when several including the Belfast
Academy were
founded. The ministers in the various Presbyteries taught Latin to young men
aspiring to orders so that they could matriculate in Glasgow university. Thomas Dix Hincks, the
founder of the Cork Institution, seemingly the only attempt to provide adult education
apart from the Mechanics Institutes, was the leading Presbyterian
educationalist. At the beginning of the
nineteenth century a grammar school for boys, joined to a college for students
for the ministry, was founded in Belfast. It was the
Royal Belfast Academical Institute. In the second
half of the century it was to become the main feeder for the new Queen's
College in Belfast, the Royal
Schools preferring to send their students to Dublin
University.
The
Quakers founded some schools on a non-sectarian basis, including the Friends'
School in Lisburn. The headmaster of the latter, John
Gough, composed widely used textbooks of English and arithmetic.
Catholic
schools were made legal by the Relief Act of 1793 and a combined school and
seminary was immediately opened in Carlow. Various dioceses and religious
Orders also opened schools. The new Jesuit school at Clongowes
disquieted the devout Protestant, young Mr Peel, newly arrived as Irish
Secretary! On investigation he concluded it was harmless. By 1848 it was computed that twenty grammar
schools for Catholic boys had been constructed. As with the nuns, several
teaching Orders of men were founded and they began in the towns providing cheap
penny-a-week schools and gradually added secondary or grammar schools. These
almost invariably in Ireland taught Latin
to boys, though this was not customary with their counterparts on the
Continent. These schools of the Christian Brothers provided a pathway for the
children of the Catholic lower middle classes to the professions. [Top]
(vi) Secondary Schools: Girls
Advertisements
for girls' schools in the eighteenth century stressed the teaching of various
branches of needlework. Music, French, drawing, and polite arts were sometimes
taught. An article in the Dublin Chronicle (13 Dec 1791) was severely critical of
the kind of education being provided for girls. It said it was much inferior to
that given to boys. The teachers were virtually illiterate, being ignorant
alike of manners, books, and men. The girls were cooped up in a room and given
no physical exercise. The curriculum consisted mostly of needlework, and the
girls were mostly taught neither languages nor science. Standards probably
remained low in girls' schools until women were admitted to university.
The
education of girls was a subject Maria Edgeworth
together with a Scottish contemporary called Elizabeth Hamilton who was also
influenced by Pestalozzi devoted much attention. The
consensus of opinion at the time was that girls should be educated to a
standard sufficient to make them fit companions and assistants of their
husbands in whatever walk of life they found themselves. A woman should not be
a helpless creature but should be able to manage her household, and even to assist
her husband or brother with their affairs. (It should be remembered that the
great Whig aristocratic ladies played an important part in national politics.
See also Jane Austen’s Pride and
Prejudice passim where Elizabeth Bennett is depicted as a lady of
education, sense and judgement. Jane Austen's father allowed his daughters to
browse freely through his library and teach themselves.)
It
is quite difficult to get information about girls' secondary schools other than
convent schools. Information on other methods of teaching girls as for example
by means of governesses is still more difficult to come by. Thom's Directory for 1844 lists the names of
about a hundred 'seminaries for young ladies', but one of these was described
as being a 'preparatory school' and the other as being for 'infants'. Secondary
schools for both boys and girls were very profitable.
Since
the Middle Ages convents had always taken in some
young ladies as boarders. In the eighteenth century there were only two or
three convents left in Ireland educating
young girls. Nevertheless, it was customary for Protestant gentlemen to send
their daughters to convents on the Continent. We have no idea how many girls,
either Catholic or Protestant, in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, were
educated in this way. As the Penal Laws were not applied to women, about 1780 a
Catholic bishop introduced a French teaching Order,
the Ursulines, and assisted in the foundation of an
Irish Order, the Presentation Sisters, to start schools for Catholic girls. By
1818 the Presentation Sisters had 18 convents with schools attached to them.
Many convent schools were founded in the
nineteenth century but by 1850 were still only to be found in the larger towns.
By the end of the century even the smallest town had its convent school. The
average number of pupils in a convent 'superior school' at mid-century was
forty eight. The teaching Sisters normally founded a cheap day primary school
first, and then added a secondary school.
The
Ballina Impartial in 1832 carried an
advertisement for 'Miss Joynt's Girls' Boarding
School' in which geography, the use of the globes (elementary astronomy),
drawing, music, dancing, English, French, and Italian were taught. The World in 1840 had an advertisement
for 'Mr Creighton's Ladies' Academy' in which English grammar, reading,
composition, history, arithmetic especially adapted to household accounts, the
globes, and the construction of maps, were taught. Mr Creighton was assisted by
his daughter and took day pupils only. Classes were held on Tuesdays,
Thursdays, and Saturdays, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and there were no vacations. In the Ulster Churchman, an organ of the
Established Church, there was an advertisement for Mrs Elderton's
Boarding School for Young Ladies that taught French especially. The latter word
probably indicates the limits of Mrs Elderton's own
attainments.
A
lady writing in the Farmers' Journal
in 1816 considered that a governess ought to be able to teach French, history,
geography, the globes, arithmetic, and needlework. A household which employed a
governess would also probably employ special teachers, coming on particular
days, to teach music, dancing, and elementary drawing. Though it does not seem
to have been formally taught, the study of botany and nature in general on
Linnaean principles was a favourite recreation of ladies in the nineteenth
century. [Top]
(vii)
Technical Schools
There
was really only one which qualified for this description and that was the
Drawing
School established
by the Dublin Society. It was long associated with the West family. In 1848 it
was re-organised as the School of
Art and Design.
It had taught design for over a century but teaching stone carving to ornament
the Customs House had no relevance for the linen industry. [Top]
(viii)
University Education
The
standards of university education in Ireland seem to have
been maintained at a reasonably high standard, and not to have suffered a
decline like that in Oxford in the
eighteenth century. Until the middle of the nineteenth century there was only
one university in Ireland. There was however, at the end of the eighteenth
century criticism of the excessive memorising of disparate and antiquated
textbooks especially by those who aspired to be fellows. Attached to it was a
printing press that produced nearly nothing. The fellows of the College were
noted for not writing books.
The
University of Dublin, founded under Elizabeth I had only one college, that of
the Most Holy Trinity. In 1820 this college had 1634 undergraduates compared
with 4,102 in all the Oxford colleges, and 3,958 in all the Cambridge colleges.
Admissions were around 200 a year of whom 30 were Catholics. Gentlemen sent
their sons to get degrees even though it was known that there would not be jobs
available for them. All the professions, including the Church were overstocked
relative to the market.
It
was founded originally to teach the usual medieval subjects, arts (philosophy),
divinity, law, and medicine. Gradually other subjects were added beginning with
botany (practical agriculture) in 1711. Mathematics, history, oriental (Middle
Eastern) languages, and modern languages were added in the eighteenth century.
A professorship of anatomy was also instituted. The first half of the
nineteenth saw the introduction of natural history, political economy, moral
philosophy, the Irish language, and engineering. (See also under Medicine). It
had a famous library that was however closed to undergraduates. The books they
need were provided in a small undergraduate collection.
At
the end of the eighteenth century the Presbyterians made more than one attempt
to found a university in Ulster. From 1830 onwards it was felt that Ireland
should have at least one more university, and that the course should be
modelled on the modern practical course pioneered by University College,
London, and that it should be situated in a predominantly Catholic city like
Cork. This latter provision would ensure that Catholic students could more
easily attend, and that a Catholic atmosphere would surround them. The same reasoning led to
the conclusion that there should be a third university situated in Belfast
particularly for the benefit of Presbyterian students. Peel, rather
ill-advisedly, decided on three new colleges, leading inevitably to a fall in
standards.
The reaction of the Catholic clergy followed
the same lines as the reaction to the National Board, but this time opponents
in the Catholic hierarchy outnumbered supporters. At a National Synod held in Thurles in 1850 they condemned the Colleges and the Holy
See confirmed their decision. The condemnation was not absolute and directly
affected only the clergy. Some Catholic laymen continued to send their children
to the new Colleges. In Belfast, the Presbyterians were satisfied with the
College there, and it became, as it was intended their College. The numbers
attending Belfast College dropped from 567 to 347 between 1880 and 1900. Those
in Cork fell from 404 to 171 in the same period, and
those in Galway from 208 to 83. By 1901 the total numbers attending university
in Ireland totalled 3,200 of whom about 1,000 attended Trinity College (Lyons).
In addition, some Irish students attended British universities.
[Top]
