An Essential Picture in a Sketch-Book of Ireland: The Last Hedge Schools

• Main Author: Mª-Yolanda Fernández-Suárez
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Asociación Española de Estudios Irlandeses 2006-03-01
• Series: Estudios Irlandeses
• Subjects: Hedge schools; Native schools; Elementary education; School buildings; Nineteenth-century Ireland
• Online Access: http://www.estudiosirlandeses.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/YFernandez.pdf

The national system of education was introduced in Ireland in 1831, which meant the beginning of the end for hedge schools. Nevertheless, they lasted longer than it is popularly believed and up to the 1870s there were still many parents willing to pay for the education of their children at the native schools. This was due to several reasons: the changing attitude of the Catholic Church towards the new system, the curriculum of the national school, its rules and material conditions, etc. After this date there is hardly any information about them. However, we have found a unique photograph which shows a hedge school still in use in 1892! In spite of being the last native school documented, it does not seem to be so different from the ones that many writers travelling in Ireland reported on earlier in the nineteenth century. In fact, it could vividly depict a scene belonging to pre-Famine rural Ireland, an essential document in any history of Irish education.