76-year-old Dublin native, Norman Croke, vividly remembers his school days from 1954 to 1961. Each morning would commence with an imminent threat of physical punishment. The teachers would scrutinise those who had not completed their homework assignments, commonly referred to as ‘ecker’. Norman, the third youngest amongst a dozen siblings residing in a cramped inner-city dwelling, did not have an encouraging environment for his studies, nor did anyone urge him to complete his work. Norman’s mother juggled two jobs, while his father was based in England, leaving little guidance and support in his education.
According to Norman, not only did they lack the necessary stationery like copybooks and pen nibs, but the pupils were also made to line up against the wall to receive their punishment. It involved wetting their hands and rubbing them together for warmth and moisture.
The schoolmaster would then proceed to physically punish them using a dual-layered coin-sewn leather strap. This practice was a daily routine at his school, Saint Andrew’s boys’ national school on Pearse Street, located behind Holles Street where Meade’s Terrace is – the place where Norman grew up.
Norman recalls the school experience as marred by violence, with punishments being doled out for minor mistakes such as misspelling a word; an ordeal targeting the head and upper body. The objective during school hours was to minimise visibility and avoid directly looking at the teachers, rather than to focus on learning. Such was the level of terror in the school that affected the overall learning process.
When the situation became inevitably unbearable, Norman and his younger brother would often default, play truant. Norman reminisces the apprehension they felt whenever the school inspector, or the ‘cigire’, would visit. The ‘cigire’ seemed only concerned about the boys’ attendance in the school, without any interest in their actual learning progress. Sadly, at the tender age of nine, Norman and his little brother were taken to the Children’s Court, located at the time in Dublin Castle, when their mother, Mary Ellen Croke, was legally challenged under the 1926 School Attendance Act.
Croke shared his story of being threatened with being sent to industrial schools like Letterfrack, Artane or Daingean if he and his brother continued to skip school. He recalled the chilling scene in court, packed with parents and children terrified of the possible outcomes. As children, he said, nobody asked them why they chose to roam the streets during the harsh winter instead of going to school.
The threat had led his mother to take them back to their school in an attempt to enforce attendance. Despite the severe punishment that they were subjected to there, Croke managed to leave the school at the age of 13, without any formal literacy skills.
He did not let his illiteracy deter him, however. Using the Pearse Street library, he undertook self-teaching and started working various jobs, getting involved in trade unions eventually. He got himself educated through Open University, and later held senior posts in trade union Siptu.
Croke has formerly talked about his tough experiences with the excessive corporal punishment in schools, going much beyond what was permitted by law. He stated that the government’s ignorance of the situation was implausible. According to him, it was widely known that children were being physically abused in schools, but instead of taking action, the state enforced school attendance while granting immunity to people who abused children.
Adding to this, he stated that the children’s right to education was also violated in such circumstances, and urged the state to accept its fault.
Certainly, corporal punishment was legally allowed in Irish schools, beginning with the 1908 Children’s Act. Then in 1933, the Department of Education authorised physical punishment for misconduct via cane, strap or birch. However, the leather strap was not permitted. The 1946 rules indicated that corporal punishment should only be given for severe transgressions and was restricted to “slapping on the open palm with a light cane or strap”.
The rules from 1946 clearly defined abusive behavior towards children, such as yanking their hair or physical harm, as strictly not allowed and would entail harsh consequences. Ten years later, the authorities permitted the use of a leather strap for disciplining purposes.
The 1965 National School Regulations instructed teachers to be deeply concerned with the betterment and overall wellbeing of their students. Rule 130 specifically indicated that corporal punishment was to be employed only in instances of grave misconduct and not for mere academic shortcomings.
The rules highlighted that only the headteacher should administer the punishment, and any educator inflicting improper or excessive punishment would have to face serious disciplinary actions.
Terry Fagan, a 74-year-old resident of North-inner-city Dublin, recollects an incident from his childhood, where he was punished so harshly that he had to drag himself back to his seat. His painful limbs were a grim testament to his ordeal, and his friends were compelled to carry him back home at the end of the day.
Fagan remembers his father, a docker by profession, taking a strong stand against this brutality, ensuring that his son would not return to the same school. Instead, he would enrol him in the nearby Presbyterian school. Despite the Catholic priest’s plea to not send his son to a Presbyterian school with a reassurance of no further harm, Fagan’s father didn’t budge.
Fagan also remembers the agony experienced by families whose sons were sent to Artane due to non-attendance at school, and the enduring effects that it had on those children. He pointed out that such episodes of school violence were hard to forget and had significantly impacted him, among others.
However, even during those times when stern corporal discipline was considered a norm, there were indeed voices that opposed it, including letters written to newspapers, journalists such as Michael Viney, and Oireachtas members.
In the 1950s, senator Owen Sheehy-Skeffington put forward a bill advocating for the termination of corporal punishment for girls. Furthermore, Dr Noël Browne TD termed the approval of adults beating children with a strap as “barbaric” and “unthinkable” in June 1957. During the 1970s, John Horgan TD repeatedly called for the whacking to be stopped.
In 1982, corporal punishment was terminated through the withdrawal of Rule 130 by the concerned department. It wasn’t made illegal until 1997, when it fell under the jurisdiction of the Offences Against the Person Act.
Dave Lordan (49), a national school attendee during the 1980s in Co Cork, among other younger survivors, recounts his experiences with a brutal teacher. He accuses this teacher of emotionally violating and belittling students. The teacher would mimic if a child had a lisp or drive away Travellers with a kick. In Lordan’s words, witnessing the acts of this “sadist” teacher cast a shadow of terror that has never left him.
There was a case of a dyslexic student who was regularly victimised by the same teacher due to his struggle with spellings. Extreme violence inflicted by the teacher resulted in the loss of two of the boy’s teeth and a black eye. The fear and anticipation of violence were constant, giving students a psychological threat for life. Lordan believes his schooling largely contributed to the depression he later suffered.
Despite the schools being under Catholic bodies, the teachers identified in these cases were secular. In 2019, during an interaction with Croke, the Department of Education dismissed the physical abuse children endured as “despicable”, but shrugged off respective accountability. Citing its “legal position”, it explained that the government facilitates education conducted by private entities, whereby their day-to-day functioning was the concern of respective patrons and managers.
However, people advocating children’s rights reference the 2014 Louise O’Keeffe judgment by the European Court of Human Rights, where the State was held accountable for the sexual abuse she faced at a school in 1971. The court emphasised the government’s inherent responsibility to protect children from harm, more so in a primary education setting. It mentioned the government’s duty to prevent abuses that the authorities ought to have known about, drawing largely from Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, ratified by Ireland in 1953 and applicable during the time when the interviewed survivors were in school.
Julie Ahern, a legal advisor for the Children’s Rights Alliance, has insisted that incidents in schools, surpassing what was legally acceptable and which the State was or should have been aware of, must be thoroughly investigated. She believes that the state should not only admit to any neglect but should also apologise for it.
Similarly, Children’s Ombudsman, Niall Muldoon, expressed a hope that such incidents of harsh treatment suffered by many across Ireland, belong to the past. He strongly believes that the state should not gloss over these experiences. Rather, it should acknowledge and condemn the cruelty of such practices. Any deliberate ignorance of these practices needs to be admitted as a mistake.
John Boyle, the head of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, admitted that corporal punishment was fundamentally wrong. He deeply regrets that such a disciplinary method was used in Ireland’s educational institutions and the subsequent failure to recognise its severity.
Niamh Murray, who heads the newly established Rutland National School in Dublin, which has ties to a school once attended by Terry Fagan, expressed the crucial importance of hearing the accounts of former students. She assured that any form of corporal punishment was undoubtedly unaccepted. She takes pride in how Rutland National School is today, referring to it as a nurturing environment with a staff that is trained on restorative practices.
A spokesperson for the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland pointed out that they were not aware of any forthcoming state apology. However, they were not against exploring such suggestions. She stated that the association was absolutely against any child abuse, even if it occurred in the past.
Moreover, The Department of Education, while approached for their views on the demand of the victims for an apology for physical abuse in schools, stated that it emphasises child protection. The department highlights that safeguarding children is a paramount duty of anyone involved in child care and education. An extended statement also included the child protection measures implemented since 1982, comprising the Children First Act 2015 and the Children First: National Guidance for the Protection and Welfare of Children 2017.
Alan Hynes, CEO of the Catholic Education Partnership, an organisation representing Catholic schools, stated that the eradication of physical punishment ranks as one of the “most important” and “gratefully received” shifts in Irish society. Hynes acknowledged that practices once seen as traditional are now, thankfully, unthinkable. The Catholic academies express deep remorse to those who, as youngsters, endured brutality or witnessed these violent actions. He emphasised that a truthful evaluation of this historical aspect was greatly overdue.