ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how rural Irish children were obliged to “engage with institutional forms of citizenship in direct ways that shaped habits of body and language” in the public classroom and in the local courtroom. In the direction of change, the Irish Free State formed the Department of Education in 1924, created new and obligatory curriculum for the revival of Irish language, and expanded the duration of compulsory education under the 1926 School Attendance Act. There was an uneven distribution of non-attendance cases throughout the Clare region which became source of concern and explicit commentary for Judge Dermot Gleeson. The Justice’s response to the bold public criticism of teachers beating children in the local state school strongly endorses the use of physical violence against children both by family and state. Gleeson explains the concept of in loco parentis, the formal legal rationale for doing so, whereby teachers assume the rights and responsibilities in absence of the parents.
