Seems timely to dust this off - a review of John Cunninghams history of the ASTI. UNLIKELY RADICALS: IRISH POST-PRIMARY TEACHERS AND THE ASTI, 1909-2009 Ostensibly an official history, John Cunningham’s study of the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI), and its relationship with the education system, also touches on four key elements of Irish society over the past 100 years: religion, class, politics and economics. It looks at the changes in Ireland since the foundation of the association in 1909, the role of the various Churches in education, the expansion of the secondary school system in the late 1960s, the growth of militancy among school teachers in the 1970s and 1980s regarding wages and women’s issues, and the move from the 1980s onwards towards the commodification of students and results. It also brings into focus the uneven relationship between economic and social class, with secondary school teachers finding themselves for much of the 20th century with a middle class status, but a working class wage. In 1919 a government report into the conditions and service of intermediate-school teachers stated that it was not possible ‘for men and women of culture’ to live on the salaries offered by schools, nor was it possible for them to teach in circumstances where they were ‘perpetually harassed by financial embarrassment.’ Three years previously, Padraig Pearse wrote in The Murder Machine that ‘many an able and cultured man is working in Irish secondary schools at a salary less then that of the viceroy’s chauffeur.’ Wages were not standardized, with externs paid an hourly rate. The Irish feminist and agitator, Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, wrote that female interns who worked for a fixed sum in Catholic schools kept convent hours and were as shut off from the outside world ‘as if she were herself a cloistered nun…. Frequently, she instructs the nuns, and, having equipped them in certain subjects, she finds her place filled by her pupils. - See more at: irishleftreview.org/2010/03/25/radicals-irish-postprimary-teachers-asti-19092009-john-cunningham
Posted on: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 16:30:33 +0000
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