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“Drifting with Denominationalism”: A Situated Examination of Irish National Schools in Nineteenth-Century Tullylish, County Down

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Marilyn Cohen*
Affiliation:
Montclair State University in New Jersey

Extract

I should like to see the National non-sectarian system of education carried out as was originally intended; but I fear it is fast drifting with denominationalism.

James Dickson, Gilford, 1879

Due to the complex, contingent relationship among schooled knowledges, cultural hegemony, and oppositionally constructed ethnic identities in Ireland, attempts to bridge the divide between Catholics and Protestants through integrated schooling have largely failed. Scholarly analysis of this failure has been overwhelming dominated by historian Donald Akenson, whose books provide a comprehensive macro-level outline of the structure and context of Irish education from the late eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Akenson's pioneering research has provided a foundation for scholars with micro-level approaches to “fill in the gaps with material gathered from individual national school classrooms.”

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the History of Education Society 

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References

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