Jesuit Education and the Irish Catholic Elite
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Cómo referenciar este artículo / How to reference this article O’Neill, C. (2019). Jesuit Education and the Irish Catholic Elite. Espacio, Tiempo y Educación, 6(2), pp. 99-120. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14516/ete.290 Jesuit Education and the Irish Catholic Elite Ciaran O’Neill e-mail: [email protected] Trinity College Dublin. Ireland Abstract: Since their re-establishment in the early decades of the nineteenth century the Jesuits have successfully maintained a position at the pinnacle of Catholic elite education. In this article I propose to discuss Irish education in the context of global trends in cosmopolitan and elite forms of education. All across Europe we find the Jesuits competing for regional elites and sub elites in this period, and the Irish Jesuits are part of this transnational pattern. I will then focus on the two most important nineteenth century foundations –Tullabeg (1818-86) and Clongowes (1814-)– as the exemplary «elite» Jesuit boarding schools in Ireland. I will then briefly discuss two less socially ascendant but nevertheless important day schools, Belvedere College (1841-) and Gonzaga (1899- ), both in Dublin. The educational product was intentionally politically muted, informed by a desire for Catholic advancement in all aspects of life, including imperial service, religious leadership, gaining a foothold in the prestigious professions, and –where possible– advocating for general Catholic advancement. As with Jesuit education elsewhere in this period it was an explicitly elitist project at the beginning of the nineteenth century, with greater market segmentation evident later in the century with the advent of the prestigious urban day-schools. Keywords: Education; Jesuit; Irish Catholic Elite; Ireland. Received: 16/02/2019 Accepted: 18/05/2019 1. Introduction Irish Jesuit education has enjoyed a socially dominant position in Ireland either side of its re-incarnation in the early nineteenth century (Hand, 2015; Ó Hannracháin, 2015). This dominant position remained consistent through the ideological and political turbulence of the revolutionary years of 1911-23, and beyond. Indeed recent systematic work by Aline Courtois confirms that this elite reputation continues right up to the present (Courtois, 2015; Courtois, 2017, 2013). And yet, for much of the nineteenth century this domestic dominance did not mean that, for Irish Catholics at least, Jesuit schools were the most prestigious choices for the richest or most influential Irish Catholic families. Paradoxically, the most attractive educational Espacio, Tiempo y Educación, v. 6, n. 2, july-december / julio-diciembre 2019, pp. 99-120. 99 e-ISSN: 1698-7802 Ciaran O’Neill product for Irish elite Catholics was to be found outside of Ireland, and usually in England, or sometimes France, at a series of elite boarding schools catering for global or regional Catholic elite groups (O’Neill, 2014; 2012; 2013). The history of Irish Jesuit education, then, is that of an order catering to an expanding rival domestic elite at the heart of the British empire, and then successfully pivoting to accommodate a new orthodoxy upon independence from the United Kingdom in 1922. The educational product – as I hope to demonstrate – was intentionally politically muted, informed by a desire for Catholic advancement in all aspects of life, including imperial service, religious leadership, gaining a foothold in the prestigious professions, and – where possible – advocating for general Catholic advancement. As with Jesuit education elsewhere in this period it was an explicitly elitist project at the beginning of the nineteenth century, with greater market segmentation evident later in the century with the advent of the prestigious urban day-schools. By the early to mid-twentieth century the Jesuits were even involving themselves in educational projects that aimed at the working classes, though this was never a consistent aim of the society. In this short article I propose to discuss Irish Jesuit education in the context of global trends in cosmopolitan and elite forms of education. I will then focus on two schools – Tullabeg (1818-86) and Clongowes (1814-) as the exemplary ‘elite’ Jesuit boarding schools in Ireland. I will then briefly discuss two less socially ascendant but nevertheless important urban day schools, Belvedere College (1841-) and Gonzaga (1899-). 2. Irish Jesuit education in transnational context Historians, along with theorists of nationalism, have long identified a link between the rise of the nation state in Europe, widening access to education, and the systemization of elite recruitment (Anderson, 2004; Charle, 2008; Ringer, 1979). The nation-state model poses problems for the study of the Irish Catholic elite, who were legally excluded from many of the roles associated with elite belonging either side of the political union with Great Britain in 1801. For much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Irish Catholics were systematically discriminated against by a Protestant and sectarian state. This changed gradually throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, and that discrimination was never total, or evenly applied (McGrath, 1996; Bartlett, 2013). As in Britain, those Catholics with significant resources, or those willing and able to protect their assets through tactical conversion and apostasy, retained significant, albeit localised power. Sons and daughters of elite Catholic families were sent to a network of elite schools across the continent, in France, in Spain, in the Spanish Netherlands, and Irish priests were educated across an important network of «Irish Colleges» across Europe which have been the subject of much research in the last two decades (O’Connor and Lyons, 2001; Fenning, 2001; Nilis, 2006). By the late eighteenth century a domestic education opened up as a possibility for these families, at schools such as Carlow College. Following the French Terror, and the subsequent flight of the English Jesuit and Benedictine foundations on the continent back to Britain, it became obvious that a market for Catholic elite education was going to open up in Ireland to cater for Espacio, Tiempo y Educación, v. 6, n. 2, july-december / julio-diciembre 2019, pp. 99-120. 100 e-ISSN: 1698-7802 Jesuit Education and the Irish Catholic Elite the expanding middle class, professional class, and minor gentry classes. The new English foundations at Stonyhurst, Downside, and Oscott all began to see Irish numbers rise (O’Connor and Chambers, 2017; O’Neill, 2014). This re-ordering of the Catholic educational landscape, then, is what led to the (re)establishment of Irish Jesuit education by a group of Sicilian trained Irish Jesuits (Morrissey, 1999). The English Benedictines did not contest this early grab for territory, and in fact nobody did for several decades. The Jesuits began this era at the pinnacle of elite Catholic education in Ireland and arguably have yet to ascend, but until the second half of the twentieth century they were always regarded as a second tier option for the richer families, the bulk of whom continued to send their sons and daughters to schools in England such as Stonyhurst, or across the continent, to schools that served a transnational Catholic elite, or at the very least a regional Catholic elite. These regional elite schools were of a type that the Jesuits had perfected in previous centuries, such as their cosmopolitan college at La Fléche, or the many colleges created in its wake at Brive, Rouen, Poitiers, and Vienne (Nelson, 2017; Marx, 2009). There were many reasons for the enduring appeal of these faraway options, even beyond the point at which the Irish options were available. The likeliest explanation was that the increased cultural and social capital associated with a schooling abroad, added to the wider networking opportunities provided by the schools, and the prestige associated with their tradition of learning. These factors all combined to make a more attractive package to the richest Catholic families in Ireland, interested as they were in the acquisition of a kind of cosmopolitan cultural capital (Weenink, 2008). In the nineteenth century about 1-2% of the Irish population were educated to the age of 18, with the large majority of Irish children dropping out of a bottom-heavy system between the ages of twelve and fourteen. The so-called «superior» education was very much a minority preoccupation right up until the middle of the twentieth century. In the mid nineteenth century the number of children in intermediate or secondary education was about 22,000, with that figure rising to 35,000 in 1901, an increase in line with similar European populations. By the late 1960s, just before the provision of free education in Ireland, the figure stood at about 170,000, and in 2017 it stood at about 352,0001. Despite the provision of free education from the late sixties, a «fee-paying» segment of second level schooling survived and persists to the present, accounting for between 6% and 7% of the total school-going population. What marks the Irish elite or «fee-paying» sector out as somewhat exceptional worldwide is that the state continues to pay the salaries of the teaching staff at fee-charging schools, meaning that the taxpayer foots the majority of the bill for an exclusive, often highly religious and socially exclusive network of privileged schools that serve a mostly domestic elite. It also means that the product is notably cheaper than in Britain, or in Swiss boarding schools, where fees can be double, triple,