Racial Representations and Colonial Ideology in 19th-Century Irish School Books: Impact and Legacy

• In Event: Reading Between the Lines: Curriculum, History, and Ideology

Abstract

Establishing a suitable programme of studies for the national system of education in Ireland that aligned with the imperial ideology of its creators was a key objective of the Westminster colonial power from the 1830s. Central to this was the inculcation within the Irish child of a sense of their own identity vis-à-vis the identity of others. This paper will critically examine the racial representations of nations and peoples beyond the British Empire in the five core reading books developed in the 1830s. The significance of these representations is accentuated given the global use of the Irish school readers across the British Empire in the nineteenth century, including in the USA.

Author

• Thomas K Walsh, Maynooth University