Nineteenth Century Elementary Education in the Archdiocese of Tuam (Maynooth Studies in Irish Local History)

"This book explores a century of memorable cultural and educational controversies in the diocese of Tuam. It also chronicles the impetus to education achieved during the first decade of the Irish Teachers' Organisation (founded 1868). It is a pioneering work in that it crosses the religious divide and records the contributions to education made by Roman Catholic and Protestant clergy and gentry, the National Schools, the Irish Church Missions to Connemara, the first Sisters of Mercy, the first Franciscan Brothers and the Protestant Diocesan Education Society. It focuses on John MacHale, Roman Catholic archbishop of the west of Ireland diocese of Tuam, county Galway (1824-81), who was the first alumnus of St Patrick's Seminary, Maynooth to be raised to the episcopacy. He perceived himself as a bastion between a Protestant British system of English language non-denominational national schools and his famine-prone Gaelic-speaking people. The voice of the ordinary people of Ireland is heard loud and clear, in this book, before many of them fled to the Americas, Canada and Australia."--Jacket.