Irish Times, 19 April 1952
When, in 1952, a rumor was spread through Dublin by an afternoon newspaper that the Irish National Teachers' Organization, the chief teachers' union, was beginning to think about the possibility of a public-school system for Ireland, the general secretary of that organization published an anxious denial, which the Irish Times embodied in a headline worthy of the New Yorker: "NO SUGGESTION OF NATIONALISING THE NATIONAL SCHOOLS." (The only adequate parallel I know is a banner displayed in a Dublin street during the 1932 Eucharistic Congress: "GOD BLESS THE TRINITY.")Paul Blanshard in The Irish and Catholic Power (1953)
And now, 55 years later the same Irish Times can tell us:
First State-run primary schools to open today
Better late than never, I suppose. I think, however, I would take issue with the Irish Times in crediting this as a first. Surely the model schools were national schools run by the State. The fact that they were few and far between and unlikely to multiply is beside the point.
I have explained some of the background to Blanshard's book and how it came into my life on my site and my reaction to a more recent reread in an earlier post.