Hedge Schools Case Study

Introduction

“…they developed a wide ranging, if rather haphazard, system of unofficial schools which became known as hedge schools.” (Coolahan, 1981)

For many years, Irish Catholics, adults and children, due to the penal laws, gained their education through hedge schools. As years passed, hedge schools were phased out and the Irish education system started to form. As many would know, the curriculum of a hedge school would differ greatly to the present education curriculum we would have passed through. Although the curriculum within schools are constantly evolving, I would like to find what the curriculum focused on within hedge schools and if the curriculum had any impact as to what the curriculum is now in schools.

“The Irish primary education system

However, the education in Hedge schools varied from school to school. Children who attended hedge schools were taught reading, writing and arithmetic, and many schools taught Latin and Greek. Young children also learnt the alphabet as well as reading and spellings.

“In 1824, a census of schools found that the vast majority of Catholic children attending school received instruction at these hedge schools (INTO, 1991)” (Kearns, 2016)

In hedge schools, different age groups attended the same semester. Some children were very young, while others might be eighteen or above. To overcome the difficulties of this, young children were allowed to play with things like pebbles and straw while the master worked with the older children. Children who did well in the studies were rewarded with things such as brass pins that they often displayed on their coats going home. Children who lived on farms could attend school in the evening, this was set up by the hedge school