Dr Brendan Walsh Launches book on Patrick Pearse
Wednesday 13 June 2007

Prof Declan Kiberd, Professor of Anglo Irish literature and drama at UCD with Dr Brendan Walsh and Dr Gerry McNamara, Head of School of Education studies

Dr Brendan Walsh, lecturer in history of education, educational policy and teaching methodology at DCU, recently launched his book entitled ‘The Pedagogy of Protest: The Educational Thought and Work of Patrick H. Pearse’. The book was launched by Prof Declan Kiberd, Professor of Anglo Irish literature and drama at UCD.

The book looks in details at the pedagogical practice at the school Pearse established, St Enda’s. Moreover, Walsh attempts to set out, for the first time, a comprehensive history and analysis of the educational thought and work of Pearse. While Pearse’s iconic status in modern Irish history needs no explanation, historians have generally paid only passing attention to his educational work. The omission is remarkable given that Pearse devoted his adult life to education and the campaign to revive the Irish language, which often led him into bitter disputes with education commissioners, civil servants, bishops and the Gaelic League. Pearse’s belief that successive British administrations were prepared to allow the language to slip into oblivion appears justified, according to Walsh, with an unwillingness by the Treasury to continue funding the language at a time when it was among the most popular school subjects. However, Pearse’s final triumph, in this regard, was in leading the campaign to have Irish made obligatory for entry to the NUI.

The book looks in detail at a host of issues from the history of the language at university level in Ireland, British thinking on the supremacy of English and the role of the vernacular, and provides a thorough study of Pearse’s theory of bilingual teaching as a means of reviving Irish. In addition, the first complete account of Pearse’s sound educational work at St Enda’s – while at Cullenswood House, Ranelagh and the Hermitage, Rathfarnham – is provided at length. In light of primary source material and taped interviews with past pupils and colleagues, Pearse emerges as a humane, energetic and inspirational teacher, not least in the school’s theatrical presentations and outstanding sporting achievements. The riskier side of life at St Enda’s is not glossed over by Walsh, from the financial difficulties Pearse experienced and falling enrolments to the role of nationalism and his advocacy of physical force separatism. Clearly, the latter two impacted heavily on his pupils, many of whom fought alongside him in the GPO during the Easter Rising.