Deirdre Raftery

This book charts the history of how Irish-born nuns became involved in education in the Anglophone world. It presents a heretofore undocumented study of how these women left Ireland to establish convent schools and colleges for women around the globe. It challenges the dominant narrative that suggests that Irish teaching Sisters, also commonly called nuns, were part of the colonial project, and shows how they developed their own powerful transnational networks. Though they played a role in the education of the ‘daughters of the Empire’, they retained strong bonds with Ireland, reproducing their own Irish education in many parts of the Anglophone world.

This book charts the history of how Irish-born nuns became involved in education in the Anglophone world. It presents a heretofore undocumented study of how these women left Ireland to establish convent schools and colleges for women around the globe. It challenges the dominant narrative that suggests that Irish teaching Sisters, also commonly called nuns, were part of the colonial project, and shows how they developed their own powerful transnational networks. Though they played a role in the education of the ‘daughters of the Empire’, they retained strong bonds with Ireland, reproducing their own Irish education in many parts of the Anglophone world.

Educated at the Bar Convent, York, Teresa Ball became a pioneer of girls' education when she returned to Ireland, opening Loreto Abbey convent and boarding school in 1822. The Dublin convent quickly attracted the daughters of the Irish elite, not only as pupils but also as postulants and novices. The rapid expansion of Loreto convents in Ireland helped to provide a supply of nuns who founded a network of Loreto convents in nineteenth-century India, Mauritius, Gibraltar, Canada, England, Spain, and Australia. This book commences with an original and important study of the Balls and their social world in Dublin at the start of the nineteenth century. Their network included members of the Catholic Committee, the Catholic Church hierarchy, and many benevolent public figures. The book gives new insight into how women operated in the margins of this Catholic world. The education of the Ball children, at York and Stonyhurst, positioned them for success in Catholic society, at a time when the confidence of their Church was growing in Ireland. The youngest of the Ball children was professed as a nun in 1816, in the York convent of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM), and returned to Dublin as Mother Teresa Ball, in 1821. With the encouragement of Dr. Daniel Murray, Teresa Ball established the IBVM at Loreto Abbey, Rathfarnham, in 1822. The convent educated the elite, and also attracted the daughters of the growing Catholic middle class. The book draws on extensive archival records, to reconstruct the history of the convent, showing how it became the 'motherhouse' to Loreto convents around the globe. The international network of Loreto convents expanded quickly in the nineteenth century, providing schooling for the Catholic colonial world. How did Teresa Ball prepare her nuns to negotiate this world? Where did they go, and what kind of distinctive 'Loreto education' did they bring with them? The book answers these questions, while also providing a new and important account of global Catholic schooling, and some of the Irish women behind it.

This publication makes the case for ‘religion and education’ as a distinct, but cross-disciplinary, field of inquiry. To begin with, consideration is given to the changing dynamic between ‘religion and education’ historically, and the differing understandings of religious education within it. Next, ‘religion and education’ is examined from methodologically specific perspectives, namely the philosophical, historical, sociological and psychological. The authors outline the particular insights to be gleaned about ‘religion and education’ on the basis of their commitment to these methodological standpoints. Overall, this publication is concerned with demonstrating the scope of the field, and the importance of having a range of disciplinary, and interdisciplinary, perspectives informing it.

This significant study traces the relationship between education and social change in Ireland from the 17th to the 20th century, marking the effects of the successes and failures of educational policy on Irish society. Incisively written by a leading group of contributors, the book is both sweeping and thorough in accounting for the various manifestations of education in Ireland. Educating Ireland measures how the education system altered the times, as well as how it changed with them. Issues, such as the training of the Garda Siochana, are illustrated along with the policing of the education system by the Church and State. Combining scholarly rigor and lively analysis, the material is presented in a manner that is varied, yet thematically unified. It is a narrative concerning education that encompasses the character of the Irish nation as a whole.