Hedge school
Hedge schools ( Irish : scoileanna chois claí ) emerged in Ireland , where it was forbidden to teach Catholic children, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries. Speaking or teaching the Irish language has also been prosecuted. The measure taken by the British occupying forces was not just a persecution of religion ; it was primarily an attempt to discourage a people under occupation.
Hedge schools were mostly in remote locations that were kept secret from the English. Popular locations were destroyed walls and barns. Lessons were also held in the shade of a hedge or in a ditch.
history
The "Hedge Schools" arose at the beginning of the 18th century as a result of the Penal Laws , according to which no person of the Catholic religion was allowed to be taught in public or private houses. The British government sponsored state schools, but the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, James Warren Doyle (1786–1834), and with him the majority of the Catholic population, refused to use them. The public schools were clearly there to convert the population to an Anglicized Ireland. As recently as 1825, the slogan was spread that Irish children should be taught the English language and the basic principles of the true religion. At that time, over 400,000 children were already attending hedge schools. The last penal laws were repealed in 1829 in the wake of Catholic emancipation and in 1832; the hedge schools subsequently disappeared.
Lessons in the hedge schools
The language of instruction was Irish. Hedge schools were the only way to learn to read, write and do arithmetic without indoctrating the occupiers. Irish people who could afford to pay school fees sent their children to the hedge schools. It is here that the laws of the Irish Brehon Laws as well as Irish history, music and tradition were passed down. Some schools taught at a higher level than the state schools and taught e.g. B. Ovid and Virgil in Latin. Individual schools even had names. Edmund Ignatius Rice (1762–1844), the founder of the Irish Christian Brothers , received his education at the Moate Lane School . Like Nano Nagle (1718–1784), he founded hedge schools for destitute Irish people.
See also
literature
- Maureen Wall: The Age of the Penal Laws (1691-1778) . In: Theodore W. Moody, Francis Xavier Martin (eds.): The course of Irish history . Mercier Press, Cork, 17th ed. 1987, ISBN 0-85342-715-1 , pp. 217-231.
- Antonia McManus: The Irish hedge school and its books, 1695-1831 . Four Courts, Dublin 2002, ISBN 1-85182-661-0 .