Model schools – model teachers? a nineteenth-century Irish teacher-training initiative.

After a full career as a teacher and a personal dedication to further education,  Joseph Doyle has turned his doctoral thesis into Model schools – model teachers? a nineteenth-century Irish teacher-training initiative. To describe it as ‘self-published’ would be a disservice, for it would stand happily beside any output from a professional academic publisher in terms not only of the quality of its design and production but also of its intellectual rigour.

         ‘In the field of Irish education during the nineteenth century,’ Doyle writes, ‘the most significant government initiative was the establishment of a system of national education, which succeeded in providing regulated elementary education for the masses.’ But the government also wanted that education to have a specific effect: to convince those masses to accept the status quo.

   Thus, the government would need teachers trained specifically to proselytise, but its attempt to establish a network of training schools to produce such teachers was less than a success.   Of course, one of the main obstacles – never overcome – was intense resistance from the Catholic Church.

     Doyle’s prose is clear and unencumbered by academic jargon, and his study will appeal to many.