Nineteenth Century Elementary Education in the Archdiocese of Tuam (Paperback)

This work explores a century of memorable and educational controversies in the diocese of Tuam. It also chronicles the impetus to education achieved during the first decade of the Irish Teachers' Organization (founded 1868). It is a work that crosses the religious divide and records the contributions to education made by Roman Catholic and Protestant clergy and gentry, the National Schools, the Irish Church Missions to Connemara, the first Sisters of Mercy, the first Franciscan Brothers and the Protestant Diocesan Education Society. It focuses on John MacHale, Roman Catholic archbishop of the west of Ireland diocese of Tuam, county Galway (1824-81), who was the first alumnus of St Patrick's Seminary, Maynooth to be raised to the episcopacy. He saw himself as a bastion between a Protestant British system of English language non-denominational national schools and his famine-prone Gaelic-speaking people.