Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
I should like to see the National non-sectarian system of education carried out as was originally intended; but I fear it is fast drifting with denominationalism.
James Dickson, Gilford, 1879
Due to the complex, contingent relationship among schooled knowledges, cultural hegemony, and oppositionally constructed ethnic identities in Ireland, attempts to bridge the divide between Catholics and Protestants through integrated schooling have largely failed. Scholarly analysis of this failure has been overwhelming dominated by historian Donald Akenson, whose books provide a comprehensive macro-level outline of the structure and context of Irish education from the late eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Akenson's pioneering research has provided a foundation for scholars with micro-level approaches to “fill in the gaps with material gathered from individual national school classrooms.”
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48 Ibid., ED.1/19 Down Aided Applications 1878–1884, #144.Google Scholar
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51 Ibid., ED.1/19 Down Aided Applications 1878–1884, #144.Google Scholar
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53 Ibid., ED.1/19 Down Aided Applications 1878–1884, #144.Google Scholar
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59 McKeown, Penny and Connolly, Michael “Education Reform in Northern Ireland: Maintaining the Distance?“ Journal of Social Policy, 21, part 2 (April 1992): 214–217.Google Scholar