Book review

Citation

(2021), "Book review", History of Education Review, Vol. 50 No. 2, pp. 309-310. https://doi.org/10.1108/HER-10-2021-090

An Ungodly Generation: the Irish national schools era in colonial Australia, 1848–1866

Max Waugh

Melbourne Books

Melbourne

2019

262 pp.

ISBN: 9781925556452

Review DOI

This book deals with the influence of the Irish national education system on the origins of state primary education in New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria. The Irish system, which began in 1831, aimed to educate Catholic and Protestant children together in government-funded schools, with religious instruction being provided separately to each denomination by its own clergy. The first section of the book, which contains a sketch of Irish and British history from about 1600, highlights the various types of education available in Ireland and the origins of the national system. The second section examines education policy during 1788–1875 in NSW and briefly in Queensland, while the last two sections concentrate on education debates in Victoria during 1836–62. Finally, a short epilogue looks at controversies surrounding denominational education in the Irish Republic today.

Dr Waugh, in tracing the impact of Irish schools policy, tends to single out particular individuals as agents of innovation. Irish historians, however, have long recognised that after the political union with Great Britain in 1801, Ireland was not treated by successive British governments as an equal partner in the United Kingdom, but instead as a quasi-colony. Thus, policies imposed on Ireland were often more interventionist and radical than anything attempted in England. If successful in Ireland, such policies were sometimes then judged suitable for implementation in other parts of the empire. This was true especially in the fields of law-and-order, health, welfare and also education.

In his emphasis on individuals, Waugh does not engage with this broader context of British colonial administration. In terms of Ireland, his focus is on E.G. Stanley, who was Irish chief secretary in 1831. He praises Stanley's “vision” (p. 227) in introducing non-denominational education, although elsewhere he concedes that the scheme did not originate with Stanley who was initially reluctant to support it. In NSW, the governors Bourke, Gipps and Fitzroy also come in for praise. Yet Bourke and Gipps failed to introduce the Irish system, and Fitzroy's 1848 compromise in the form of a dual government and Church scheme proved expensive, inefficient and short-lived. Irish-born Governor Richard Bourke is identified as the “catalyst” (p. 225) for the implementation of the Irish system under Fitzroy, even though Waugh acknowledges that, by extending state aid to all religious schools under his 1836 Church Acts, Bourke actually entrenched denominational education.

Much is also made of the support given to the Irish system in NSW by Irish Catholic laymen, like the lawyers J.H. Plunkett and Roger Therry. However, the same approach is not taken as regards Victoria, despite the fact that Irish laymen were even more prominent in the formulation of education policy there than they were in NSW. Leading Irish Catholic politicians, like John O'Shanassy and Peter Lalor, are mentioned, but not discussed in any detail. Irish Protestant politicians involved in the Victorian education debates, like W.E. Hearn, George Higinbotham, Francis Murphy and William Stawell, are referred to in passing, but, strangely, without any of them being identified as Irish.

In Ireland itself, the national system failed in its purpose of ending sectarian animosities through non-denominational education. By 1900, both primary and secondary schools, although largely state-funded, were overwhelmingly church-run. In his epilogue, Waugh praises a recent campaign in one wealthy Dublin suburb intended to promote multi-denominational education. Yet it is in Northern Ireland, not Dublin, where the issue is most pressing today, for, despite 20 years of relative peace, little progress has been made towards non-denominational education there and, partly as a consequence, the two communities remain as far apart as ever.

The book has two notable flaws that together seriously undermine its reliability: one concerns its sources, the other its accuracy. In the Introduction, Dr Waugh explains that his “original research” was carried out for a PhD thesis completed in 1997. In publishing this work now in book form, he says he hopes to make the material “palatable” to teachers, students and the “general public” (p. 11). However, it is very apparent that he has not chosen to update his sources since the mid-1990s. Of the books listed in the bibliography, nearly half are at least 50 years old, with many dating back as far as the 1920s and 1930s. Only four post-2000 works appear, and just one of these is a history of Australian schools. In deciding to publish his thesis after such a long interval, Dr Waugh should have updated his secondary source material.

These dated sources probably contribute to the book's rather old-fashioned approach to history, and they may also contribute to its second serious flaw: the many major factual errors it contains. These are especially numerous in the section on Ireland and Britain, although the Australian sections too contain inaccuracies, as well as spelling mistakes. It would be impossible to list all the errors, but a sample of the Irish and British ones will give a flavour of their character. A rebellion did not occur in Ireland in 1741 (p. 14), but in 1641. William of Orange did not defeat King James I (p. 14), but his grandson James II. Edmund Burke was not one of the “British Whigs in the Irish Parliament” (p. 26), but an Irish-born member of the British parliament, who, though starting out as a Whig, is chiefly remembered today as one of the ideological founders of British conservatism. The 1829 Catholic Emancipation Act was not a Whig measure (p. 74), but a Tory one, while the Great Irish Famine does not date to either 1847 (p. 15) or 1844–8 (p. 50), but to 1845–50.

By calling attention to a neglected but important aspect of the fierce controversies surrounding education policy in colonial NSW and Victoria, this book is useful. But we still await a substantial scholarly study of the influence of the example of Ireland on policy formation in the Australian colonies, whether in education or other areas.

Elizabeth Malcolm

The University of Melbourne - Parkville Campus Hiobart, Tasmania, Australia