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Hedge Schools of Ireland
By Maura Ciarrocchi
A tribute to a people who valued learning

The Hedge Schools of Ireland

A tribute to a people who valued learning

By Maura Ciarrocchi, ICSSA Newsletter, Oct 1999

Teaching, an ancient and honorable profession, was once a dangerous 
calling in Ireland.  Ruled from England for two centuries, the Irish 
were denied access to both justice and education.
	The early 18 century parents who were illiterate through no 
fault of their own, and men who had somehow learned teaching skills 
despite the law, took matters into their own hands. Determination 
was their answer to frustration, and out of this the Irish hedge 
schools were born.
	Anyone who sheltered or housed a schoolteacher was 
penalized if the se­cret was discovered. The familes house would be 
burned, its crops destroyed. The Irish, however, have always been 
masters of resourcefulness. To avoid involving families in risking 
their homes and property, the hedge-school teacher took his 
students out-of-doors. He would select a remote corner, the hidden 
side of a hedge or a mossy bank that protected his pupils from 
being spotted by passing strangers, and class was underway.
 
A secret system
An aura of excitement abounded in those schools. Perhaps doing 
some­thing forbidden" made the teaming juices flow. A different 
student was selected each dayy to serve as a lockout and would give 
the signal if a stranger was approaching. The few books and pieces 
of paper were quickly hidden, and teacher and students scattered in 
haste until the danger passed.
There is also strong evidence that the involvement of parents, who 
paid something - however small - directly to the teacher, played a 
major part in the success of the hedge schools. Denied an education 
themselves, they wanted something better for their children.
From this background the brightest or the most ambitious students 
found their way into the army, the Church, Foreign Service, and the 
legal and medical professions by way of European universities. It 
is significant that from the 16th century through the middle of the 
17th century, about 20 colleges for Irish Catholic students were 
established on the continent. Salamanca, Lisbon, Douai, Antwerp, 
Toulouse, Paris and Prague each boasted an Irish university. In 
Rome, there were at least four foundations.
	Some of the Irish who attended the European universities 
received their early education in foreign schools, but it is also 
on record that many had their early training at home - where only 
the hedge schools had been open to them. This clearly speaks to 
the academic standards of the open-air schools.
	Elementary reading, writing and mathematics were the first 
lessons, later followed by Latin, Greek, higher mathematics, 
history, geography, bookkeeping, surveying and navigation. Travelers 
to Ireland at the time wrote in their journals of the high standard 
of classical learning among the ragged peasantry. They did not 
conceal their surprise in references to "tattered copies of (the 
works of) Ovid or Virgil found in the hands of common laborers, or 
of conversing with farm hands in the classical languages.
	Classes ceased during the winter, at least during the 
earliest years of the hedge schools. During this period, the poor 
teacher often found work as a farmhand or, if he dared, taught a 
family secretly in a home. But with the first sign of winters end, 
at an ap­pointed time and place, the learning continued.
	Students, both boys and girls, sat on smooth stones, 
sometimes learning without the benefit of books, often writing with 
sticks in the dirt.
	The itinerant hedge-school teachers are credited with 
preserving the Irish language and much of the poetry and legends 
of Ireland. It is said, too, that there was hardly a poet of the 
18th century who had not been a teacher at some time in his life. 
Some of these dedicated teachers copied complete books by hand and 
then loaned them to their students.
	As government restrictions on education eased, rough mud 
huts or cabins were put together for the teacher. In the long winter 
months, each child carried a few pieces of turf to school as a 
contribution to the fire that kept the room warm. Since a small hole 
in the roof was the only outlet for the smoke, both teacher and 
students had red eyes and sore lungs at the end of the day. 
	The poor scholar was another prod­uct of the hedge school. 
He was the boy of superior learning ability who moved from school 
to school in search of more advanced knowledge. Like the teacher, 
he was completely dependent on the local people for shelter, food 
and clothing, and like the teacher, he was also highly respected. 
He would eventually gather his own students around him unless he 
was fortunate enough to find a sponsor to pay his way to one of 
the European colleges.
	Ireland's Daniel O'Connell. 'The Great Liberator." learned 
his alphabet in a hedge school in four hours, it is said. Years 
later he supported a gifted poor scholar sending him to a university 
in Dublin to complete his so education. Matthew Tiemey, a 19th 
century physician who served England's King George IV, is one of 
the best-known graduates of Ireland's hedge schools. 

Parents made decisions
 
	With no superintendent of schools, no board of education, 
which selected the teachers who simply drifted from place to place? 
Parents, uneducated themselves, made the important selection. Word 
was passed around that a teacher was needed and somehow a teacher 
would appear. If two or more candidates materialized, a regular 
contest of intellects took place. (It wasn't always the best 
teacher, but the best showman, who got the job.) "Sacking" was 
the battle of wits which one teacher tried to outdo the other in 
subject range and wit. A teacher who came up with a specialty 
that his opponent lacked would use this as his trump card. The 
winner usually accepted by the parents despite the fact that few 
of them were capable of understanding this battle of the minds. 
The ousted teacher would then go on to sack another 
hedge­schoolteacher.
No social gathering was complete without the le hedge­school teacher. 
He was the village scribe and the parish clerk, titles carrying no 
salary but making up but making up for it in prestige.  
	As restrictions were lifted, the results of the twice-yearly 
school examinations were printed in the local newspapers for all to 
see-a method; perhaps that urged students on to success. The 
hedge-school teachers instilled in young minds a love of poetry and 
learning, and a need for knowledge. These unique schools were a 
link in a chain of learning that continued until the coming of the 
national school system in 1832. The hedge schools have been 
described as guerilla warfare on the British government's attempts 
to restrict education of the Irish. No doubt, the poor Irish 
parents won the battle.
Today, Ireland has the world's highest rate of literacy - 99 percent  
a lasting legacy to the outlaw hedge schools and the urgently needed, 
quality education they provided.