13th December 2010, 8pm
Dr. John Cunningham, 'Unlikely Radicals:
Irish Post-Primary Teachers and the ASTI 1909-2009.
A hundred years ago, at the time when the ASTI was founded, post-primary exucation was a small and exclusive redoubt in the Irish education system, which was an option for only about one in ten of those boys and girls who finished primary school. Most secondary schools were run by religious bodies, and conditions for the lay teachers who worked in them were very poor.
The founders of the ASTI, who included Eamonn de Valera, 1916 leader Thomas McDonagh and feminist republican Mary MacSwiney had a number of far-reaching objectives. They wanted job security, a recognised pay scale, and pension rights, they wanted to have some say in the running of their schools and in education policy generally; they wanted to broaden access to secondary education.
At a public lecture in the Harbour Hotel on Monday 13 December at 8pm, under the auspices of the Galway Archaelogical and Historical Society, Dr. John Cunningham will describe the Irish educational circumstances of a century ago, and examine the role of the ASTI in Irish education during the decades since then.
Dr. John Cunningham is a lecturer in History at NUI Galway. He is the author of several books including Unlikely Radicals, post-primary teachers and the ASTI, 1909-2009 (Cork, 2009) and 'A town tomented by the sea': Galway 1790-1914 (Dublin, 2004). He is currently editor of Saothar: Journal of the Irish Labour History Society and assistant editor of the Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society.
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