In the Irish Times, 29/12/2015, Sean O'Donnell criticises the blinkered Catholic nationalism and the culture of violence of his schooldays, in the course of which he takes a pop at his, and my, alma mater, Coláiste Mhuire.
He seems to have got the short end of the stick when he was landed with Brother Kinsella. I don't remember that brother, who may have come after I left in 1963, but we too had our quota of violent teachers. In those days you got them everywhere, not just in Coláiste Mhuire.
As far as the Christian Brothers were concerned the country was divided into two provinces, north and south, with the split being on a line between Dublin (northside ?) and Galway. Brothers were rotated around within their own province, so a lot of other non-Coláiste, and probably non-Dublin, pupils would have had the pleasure of Brother Kinsella over his teaching career.
Maybe my class was lucky overall in the range of teachers we had.
An Br. Ó Maitiú
Our class brother was Brother Matthews and he was more given to psychological than to physical torture. Whether this was more damaging in the longer run is a matter for debate. He did, generally, look after his pupils, though.
Albert Folens
We had an exceptional French teacher in the person of Albert Folens (Froggy), who, in the absence of Irish, had to teach by the direct method, which was ultimately to our advantage. We were not aware at the time of some of the more controversial aspects of his past. To us he was just a good French teacher.
Michael Judge
We also had the benefits of a wider literary education from Michael Judge (Judgie), who was our English and art teacher, and who died only recently.
Brian Devanney
And we had Brian Devanney (Babs) both as an English teacher and musical director. He was a most civilised and cultured man, and, like Michael Judge, wrote for external media.
And then there was Harry, an Br Ó Leathlobhair (Lawlor). He was a fierce enthusiastic and excellent teacher of physics and chemistry. And he'd have needed to be. There was no Irish language textbook for these subjects. Harry spent a lot of his time drawing and writing text on the board which we diligently spent most of the class copying into our science copybooks - illustrations onto the scaled pages on the left, text onto those on the right. I think this disgraceful gap may have subsequently been filled by Albert Folens & Co., but I had long left by then and don't know. [I initially left Harry out of this blog post as I hadn't a photo to hand, but I think I have one somewhere and will see if I can surface it.]
There was no shortage of extra-curricular activities. I was not involved in sport, nor was I a star of the mat drill, but I was in the school orchestra which was run by Babs. We not only played at school concerts, but we were externally assessed.
The orchestra also had an offshoot, the pit orchestra, which played in the pit, as opposed to onstage, to accompany the onstage gymnastics displays at the annual school concerts. This was a much looser arrangement than the formal orchestra
And we had a string quartet and subsequently quintet, which played Mozart and Beethoven at the school concerts, and even played the Presidential Salute in the Gate Theatre, for Dev and Sinéad, at the opening of Féile Drámaíochta na Scol. [Update: I was informed last night, 31/9/2020, that that particular occasion was for Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh and that we did the needful for Dev in the Francis Xavier Hall.]
Debaters: Pól Ó Duibhir, Alan Dukes,
Colm Ó Muircheartaigh, Naos Mac Cumhaill
Then there was the debating, admittedly confined to a relatively small number of pupils. The photo above is a press photo and it was taken when we won the Leinster championship in the Gael Linn national debates.
Obverse: 1963 Gael Linn
Díospóireacht Craobh Laighean
Pól Ó Duibhir
Remember these debates were entirely in Irish. You could not prepare for them as you only got the subject twenty minutes before the start. Debaters, however, could take individual positions for or against the motion. The team aspect only really came into play when the scores were added up at the end.
Me as St. Peter with two of the Marys
And the annual pageants. As Sean says, these were written and directed by Tomás Mac Anna. He did a brilliant job on them and any participant keeping his wits about him learned a lot about stagecraft, including sound and lighting which were operated by pupils on the night.
You can see a programme for the 1963 pageant here.
I had my own role in them. I didn't like being onstage, with or without a script, and eventually managed to hog the role of drummer (in the pit) when Brian Tuite, the resident brilliant drummer, left.
And yes, the school was very nationalistic. I suppose it was a combination of Irish language and Catholic church. But the whole 1966 commemoration of 1916 showed how naïvely nationalistic most of the nation was in those days. The proper evidence based study of history, as opposed to its ideological counterpart, only emerged gradually after that time.
Some members of my class reflected on the school in the context of a retrospective on Mise Éire released in 2013.
As far as my class is concerned, in more recent years we have had reunions, some of which were attended by a majority of the old class. We have a slightly broader mailing list, and I have a web page devoted to our class, past and present.
Class of 1971
By 1971, standards of sartorial elegance and hair styles had evolved somewhat from my day as a comparison of the two class photos in this post will testify. A skim through subsequent class photos will show this as a continuing trend.
So I'm sorry Sean had a bad experience. I enjoyed most of my schooldays in Coláiste and that's not because I was spared the leather, because I wasn't. But we were spared the hopefully few madly violent teachers, and ambient (normal) violence was part of the wallpaper at that time throughout the educational system.
Related post: Seomra 1916
Bhí Sean O'Donnell lán go béal le cac agus ba náireach an rud é don Oirish Toimes an t-alt sin a fhoilsiú gan freagra. Ní raibh an scoil foirfe, nó gar dó bheith, ach nuair a luaitear Babs, Judge (cé nár thaitin an sean-mhnáchas a bhain leis liomsa) agus daoine uaisle cosúil le Hamill, Plank, Órla, Milo, Piggy agus go leor eile ní fíor in aon chur an méid a bhí sa nuachtán.
ReplyDelete@Fiachra
I came across your blog while searching for Brother Mathews online.
ReplyDeleteI attended Colaiste Mhuire, Parnell Sq. from Sept 1959 until June 1964. I wish I could say it was a pleasant five years…. but it was not. Although I personally did not suffer a lot of physical abuse I did witness it being visited on other daltai. Nevertheless even this daily expectation that, today might be my turn, was a constant fear.
Let me say that I am not generally a subscriber to clergy bashing or indeed Irish Christian Brother bashing. I am inclined to make allowances for the times that were in it. Nevertheless upon mature recollection I have reached my own conclusions regarding my time there.
Christian Brothers were recruited from the National Schools in the year preceding year to the primary cert, when the target audience were boys, typically pre pubescent 11 year olds. Secondary schools were invariably fee paying in those days, and if a promising young Jack or Tommy had parents who couldn’t afford to send him to secondary school, they may have thought they were doing the right thing to “ encourage” him to get a better future and a fuller education by joining the Christian Brothers. Sure couldn’t he always leave when he had had the benefit of their system ?
In theory this might have seemed a good idea, but it didn’t factor in the brothers protective ways to mind their investment in Jack or Tommy. He would be institionalised by the system long before he had a degree or a H dip. Not allowed home for three years after joining, except for the funeral of a parent or a sibling, and even then only for the actual day. Thereafter only allowed home for a couple of weeks in the summer but with the proviso that he remain in clerical garb.
This in my opinion, resulted in the many cases of sexual frustration, often causing the exceptional levels of physical, and some levels of sexual deviance evident in many of the Christian Brothers I came into daily contact while a pupil in Colaiste Mhuire.
Brother Mathews was an example of the latter kind, if you were unfortunate enough to arrive into first year still in short pants, you would find yourself very much the object of his special attention. He would enter the class and write something on the board and then pick an unfortunate and slide his tall frame into the double bench, forcing the lads companion out of the other side. Then he would direct the displaced student to go to the blackboard to reply to the question there. This allowed Br. Mathews to turn his attention to the short trousered victim.
Milo was a great teacher, but very short on patience and given to sudden fits of temper, often descending into serious violent assaults on an offending pupil. This was eventually explained to me in confidence by my chemist father who was aware of his medical history.
I left the Colaiste after the leaving cert but have few happy memories of my time there.
John Phelan
johnphelan.redshed@gmail.com
Hi John,
ReplyDeleteBizarrely my name is also John Phelan, though known as Sean O Faolain , while attending Colaiste Mhuire from 1964 to 1969.
I agree with much of your comments on how some Christian Brothers came to be sadistic psychopaths.
Overall I was lucky enough to be a reasonably good student, good at games and played for the Dublin minors while in school. This allowed me to avoid sme, but not all, of the violence meted out by the likes of Kinsella. This man was mad, and even carried out beatings up and down the stairs. He was so mad that he was oblivious to the harm and fear he generated. Proof of that can be gleaned from him approaching me in Crome Park a few yeas after leaving school. He preferred his hand towards me and greeted me as though I was a long lost friend. He was shocked when I rejected his handshake and Todd him what an unpleasant specimen he was.
Another deranged creature, masquerade ng as a Gaelic academic, was LP O Cathnia. He arrived as a Head Brother in my final year. His modus operandi centred around randm violence. So outrageous was his carry on that a few of us let it be known that we intended to confront him if he was violent again. Word of this got back to the Monastery, and he never struck anyone again while I was in the school. But this guy had previous form. He arrived in Colaiste Mhuire at 44 years of age. He had been moved around Ireland at such a rate that he had already been in schools in Waterford, Kells, Tralee, Galway, Newry, Dundalk and at least 3 other schools in Dublin.
So, like other contributors, I too have good memories of such as Michael Judge, my French teacher, Brother Kelly and many of my fellow pupils. But the only bad eggs left a pervasive whiff of violence abut the school. I
Hi Sean. Came across your comment. I was also in 1969 class and on the same hurling teams as you. Hope you are keeping well. Michael Lenihan (Micheal O' Leineachain)
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