Böcker av Tony Lyons

This book outlines the principal features of the Payment by Results policy, first introduced in England in 1862. It draws attention to some of the positive aspects of the system but it also considers the more salient features of a system that preyed heavily on both pupils and teachers. Inspectors were used as agents of its implementation, resulting in a divergence of views between them and the teachers. Very few regretted its demise in 1900 when it was replaced by the Revised Programme, a much more child-centred curriculum. It was a system of schooling rather than of education, and it served very few admirably.

«Tony Lyons¿s study restores Thomas Wyse to the prominent place where he belongs ¿ as one of the most consequential and far-seeing educational thinkers in nineteenth century Ireland. Long a neglected figure, everybody interested in the history of Irish education will profit from this work.»(Professor James Kelly, St. Patrick¿s College, Dublin City University)This is the first major work on Thomas Wyse, and his plans for education reform. It places him, first and foremost, as an educationist, particularly between the years 1830 to 1845. The book draws upon his firm conviction that a national system of education should have a legislative foundation; a solid legal bedrock creates permanency, and, this coupled with universality, was a true national system. Not for him, narrow nationalism: his understanding had greater scope, including all social classes and all ages from primary education, to intermediate, to university and supplementary education. The book bears testimony to and conveys explicitly the core of these ideas. The book is an academic biography of a man who used his good office to explore the prevailing political atmosphere at the time and to produce a programme which would augment and reform education provision in Ireland and the wider United Kingdom. The book amplifies the key elements of Wyse¿s educational thinking, and the reader should find the analyses throughout the book both beneficial and enlightening.

The book deals with the clash between the free, enterprising pay schools and the controlled and systematized national schools. Many commissions of inquiry were instigated, beginning in 1791, and continuing until the foundations of the national school system of 1831. From Thomas Orde in the 1780s to Thomas Wyse in 1830, the cumulative evidence of the commissions of inquiry led to the substitution of the long-running pay schools. The new systematic approach introduced teacher training, purpose-built schools, inspection, uniform school texts, and an array of rules and regulations. It took the people considerable time to grapple with the new regime. In order to understand the difficulties the people had in accepting the new schools, it is worth drawing attention to Brian Friel¿s play Translations in which he teases out the alien concept of an imposed school in a remote part of Donegal.

This book explores the impact of the Lesson Books of the National Board of Education in Ireland in the nineteenth century. Through meticulous analysis of each Lesson Book, the author traces the evolution of education in Ireland as a reflection of contemporary society, as it changes and transforms in line with cultural, religious and social changes.