ABSTRACT
Whether or not Ireland experienced a “Victorian Age” is a moot historical point, for Ireland in the nineteenth century was never bound fully by the assumptions about the constitutional, social, and moral order which prevailed in England and which were represented, as if in caricature, by the sovereign. Nevertheless, certain institutions in late nineteenth century Ireland were unmistakenly Victorian in the pejorative sense of the word, and none more so than the state educational systems. Like many quintessentially Victorian organizations and objects, the Irish school systems were elaborate, pious, and awkward. And like so many Victorian artifacts, the Irish school systems survived intact well into the twentieth century in this case into the 1920s. Obviously, to chart intelligently the history of education under the new government of southern Ireland, we must begin by discussing the all-Ireland educational structures that were inherited by the government in 1922 and subsequently modified according to the nation’s peculiar circumstances. At the close of the nineteenth century there were, below the university level, three separate self-enclosed educational systems: national, intermediate, and technical education. The first provided primary schooling, the second academic secondary education, and the third vocational training.
