ANALYSISPatrick Pearse is most remembered for leading the 1916 Rising. But his contribution to education, being marked today with the launch of two commemorative stamps, was also revolutionary, writes Elaine Sisson
ONE HUNDRED years ago this month, the gates to St Enda's School, in Cullenswood House, Ranelagh, opened to enrol sons from some of the most eminent nationalist families in Ireland. Its headmaster and founder, Patrick Pearse, was realising a long-held dream of providing a modern, child-centred, bi-lingual education for Irish boys. Given his profile within the Gaelic League as a hard-working, if pedantic, advocate for the reform of education, it was perhaps inevitable that Pearse should some day look to founding his own school.
The St Enda's roll-call of 1908 lists boys from some of the most eminent nationalist families in Ireland. Among the first group of 70 pupils were Eoin MacNeill's three sons and a nephew; the MP Stephen Gwynn's son Denis; William Bulfin, editor of an Argentinian-based Gaelic League newspaper enrolled his son Eamonn as a boarder; George Moore's son Ulick attended, as did WP Ryan's son Desmond. James Larkin's sons joined later in the school's history and at one point Maud Gonne considered sending her son, Seán Mac Bride.
Yet support for the school extended far beyond parental enthusiasm. In the early years St Enda's attracted the attention of most of the significant cultural nationalists of the day. Douglas Hyde, Standish O'Grady and WB Yeats were frequent visitors as were Constance Markievicz, Ella Young and Maud Gonne. Roger Casement and Seán O'Casey also signalled their approval of Pearse's experiment.
There was unlikely support from international figures: Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian nationalist; Lord Baden Powell, the founder in England of the Boy Scout Movement, and Lord Alfred Douglas (Oscar Wilde's Bosie) were all aware and admiring of St Enda's. Indeed, Tagore established a similar school in Bengal, which was referred to by Yeats as the Indian St Enda's.
A commitment of the teaching staff to nationalist politics meant that five teachers, including Pearse, were executed for their part in the 1916 Rising: William Pearse, Joseph Plunkett, Thomas Mac Donagh and Con Colbert.
What made St Enda's so distinctive? Pearse is not now often remembered as an innovator in educational methods or even primarily as a schoolmaster. However, those who knew him said he was at his most fluent and enlightened when speaking about education.
The lack of freedom within the modern system, Pearse wrote in his essay, The Murder Machine, his 1915 polemic against the Irish teaching system, had resulted in a situation where the Board of Education dictated what a child learned and not the teacher who knows the whole child.
Likening contemporary schooling to a "manufacturing process", he despaired at the thwarting of knowledge by information which had resulted in a system "without pity or passion". As an admirer of the work of Maria Montessori, the Italian physician who devised the teaching method that bears her name, he was passionate in his determination to create a child-centred education which fostered intellectual freedom, personal development, creativity, and imaginative flair.
His clashes with the clergy belie the perception that Pearse was slavishly devoted to the Catholic Church and his desire to found a Catholic lay-school was in part motivated by the failure of religious-run schools to attend to the needs of the whole child.
The prospectus of 1908, perhaps especially by today's standards, seems modern, liberal and engaging. In the first year alone the boys heard lectures from visiting speakers on subjects as diverse as French literature, phonetics, philosophy, medieval history, Egyptology, botany and archaeology.
The combination of curricular innovation and an active, imaginative input from the Revivalist movement meant that the quality and vibrancy of a St Enda's education exceeded usual standards.
Pearse's pupils remember him as an inspirational schoolmaster whose teaching methods were unconventional, even anarchic. He took them out of the classroom, using geography to teach history, nature to teach geometry, music to teach maths, art to teach Irish.
However, there is a darker note. Certainly Pearse's promotion of valour and heroism, refracted through a fascination with mythology, is an uncomfortable mix to a modern audience. Photographs of the boys in pageants and plays, dressed up as ancient Irish warriors (yet looking like extras from a Wagnerian opera) are inevitably viewed through the lens of Pearse's later militancy.
St Enda's had two homes during Pearse's tenure as headmaster. The first, Cullenswood House in Ranelagh, Dublin, was the site of St Enda's early years. Later, in 1910, the growth of the school necessitated a move to the Hermitage in Rathfarnham.
Cullenswood House became the home of a girl's school, St Ita's, which Pearse had established in 1911. Today the Hermitage houses the Pearse Museum dedicated to his life and educational work.
Cullenswood House fell into a state of dereliction before it was restored and is now home to a Gaelscoil, Lios na nÓg. Tonight at 8pm, a concert takes place in Scoil Bhríde as part of Ranelagh Arts Week, celebrating the centenary of the foundation of St Enda's.
Like the legacy of Pearse himself, the educational experiment of St Enda's is complex, and it is fitting that some aspects - its emphasis on heroic self-sacrifice for example - are best remembered by the museum while its vibrancy, enthusiasm and child-centredness lives on in the Gaelscoil movement.
• Elaine Sisson is a lecturer and research fellow at the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media at the Institute of Art, Design & Technology in Dún Laoghaire. She is the author of Pearse's Patriots: St. Enda's and the Cult of Boyhood (Cork University Press)