Opinion

Fear did a lot of heavy lifting in Irish classrooms

Teachers, religious and lay, were not afraid of inflicting pain because there was no risk involved. But protecting their charges meant taking enormous risks

Lifelong anxiety, educational deprivation, mental breakdown and alcoholism were the price many paid for surviving this abuse. And there must have been some who did not survive it. Photograph: Agency Stock
Lifelong anxiety, educational deprivation, mental breakdown and alcoholism were the price many paid for surviving this abuse. And there must have been some who did not survive it. Photograph: Agency Stock
Lindsey Earner-Byrne
Wed Oct 30 2024 - 06:00

If violent social control is central to how you run a State, then you start with children.

While not all teachers beat their pupils in the decades up to the 1980s, this was not just a case of a few bad apples. The violence in Irish institutions was systemic and the beating of children in schools was enabled by the legal apparatus of the State. Over the years, the Department of Education modified the rules regarding the use of corporal punishment, banning it, for example, for “mere failure at lessons” in 1947. It did little, however, to enforce this.

Many of the cases in a documentary by RTÉ, to be screened tonight, happened after this date and would have been considered excessive even by the standards allowable prior to 1947.

The documentary, entitled Leathered, reveals a society in which physical violence and fear worked to pervert care and love.

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A 1974 Irish Union of School Students’ survey revealed that 84 per cent of schools surveyed used corporal punishment involving a variety of implements from leather straps to hurleys, sticks and branches

It was in the early 1950s that the issue began to feature as controversial in public debate, with parents writing into newspapers to reveal horrendous levels of violence in Irish classrooms. The official response to this challenge? The Minister for Education relaxed the regulations in 1956 to allow the use of the strap. Over the next decades the State continued to resist moves to remove corporal punishment from Irish schools. Even when it was abolished in 1982, teachers had effective immunity from prosecution until 1996 (when corporal punishment became an illegal act).

[ ‘He bate the f**k out of you - every day’: victims of corporal punishment on violence in the classroom ]

When in the late 1960s a mother and her GP, Paddy Randles, stood up for one little boy against the system abusing him, he recalls in the programme: “It was a life saver. Someone dared to protect you, instead of inflict pain on you.” It is so simple and goes to the heart of all that was wrong in the Irish education system until at least the 1980s: the right to inflict pain, on generations of children and teenagers, overrode the imperative to protect. Teachers – religious and lay – were not afraid of inflicting pain because there was no risk involved. They were, however, frequently afraid of protecting their charges, because in doing that they risked isolation, unemployment and vilification. How can that have been the social equation in Ireland for so long? Figuring out that dynamic is crucial to understanding how brutal systems endure.

One brave teacher interviewed in the documentary who was very opposed to corporal punishment honestly reflects upon the two occasions he resorted to it, describing it as dehumanising of the boys and of himself. What his testimony so poignantly reveals is how once violence is normalised in a system it dehumanises everyone involved.

While some cases of violence were particularly savage, the violent enforcement of discipline and learning was normalised. Fear did a lot of heavy lifting in Irish classrooms.

The documentary notes that there were 108 complaints recorded in the Department of Education’s archives between 1962 and 1982. Archives are rooted in the power systems that create them. They are not neutral places. The bureaucracy of the State worked to serve and shield that State; this was not a system eager to document its failings.

The records of complaints are just that, records of complaints made. They tell us about those specific cases, how complaints were handled, and indicate the factors that may have informed people’s capacity to make an effective complaint. They are not records of abuse experienced, nor of its frequency.

Just ask anyone educated in Ireland between the 1940s and 1980s: most will have a story of experiencing or witnessing violence. A 1974 Irish Union of School Students’ survey revealed that 84 per cent of schools surveyed used corporal punishment involving a variety of implements from leather straps to hurleys, sticks and branches.

[ ‘She slapped me so hard in the face she knocked me out’: Corporal punishment in Irish schools ]

Cultures are shaped from the top. My first memories of education still glow with love; the nun in charge of my first primary school was a wonderful person. The love came from the top. In 1980, when we moved to another part of the country, my life changed dramatically because of a teacher. I was seven and I learned to dread school. I was not particularly targeted by this teacher, but in my memory, in my gut, her knuckle-thumping of any girl who stuttered or could not recall that week’s sermon at mass or recite their times tables created a collective little hell in which we all waited to be next.

My experience is by no means as severe as those recounted in RTÉ’s documentary, but I do not like talking about it and I hesitated to include it here. I can only imagine what it took for the men in Leathered to share their stories. It is a devastating watch. Grown men stopped in their tracks by the emotion of recall, little boys with their futures stolen, over and over again. Lifelong anxiety, educational deprivation, mental breakdown and alcoholism, the price many paid for surviving this abuse. And there must have been some who did not survive it – how many we may never know.

Institutions protect themselves; that’s what they are designed to do. They also have cultures that are incredibly hard to change. If the Irish State includes cases of physical violence in its inquiry into abuses in Irish schools, it will indicate that the culture has changed to one that “dares to protect”.

Lindsey Earner-Byrne is Professor of Contemporary Irish History at Trinity College Dublin and Director of the TCD Centre for Modern and Contemporary Irish History. Leathered: Violence in Irish Schools airs tonight at 9.35 pm on RTE One and on the RTE Player