An Intellectual Space for Girls: Evangelical Education in the Crofting Community, 1811-1843 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Innes Review, 2014
There is a delightful anticipation the first time one eases a document from its plastic sheet or coaxes open a musty volume: the catalogue has given a hint, but it really could contain anything. It can also be both fascinating and frustrating when one recognises that the information which an item contains could be very important for a fellow researcher, but is tangential to one's own work. One might read it out of curiosity, or take a few notes, before being obliged by the constraints of time to leave it aside and refocus on the research topic in hand. Such experiences can be a little unsettling, since essential evidence for one's own research might be hidden within a source whose title gives away no indication of its usefulness. For students of a subject like the Jacobites or the Clearances this is not a serious problem, since a wealth of sources is a mere 'request' away in major and minor repositories across Scotland and abroad. For those who wish to analyse less tumultuous subjects, the clues secreted in documents that are not obviously related to the topic in hand can be critical. With the notable exception of Alasdair Roberts, the paucity of researchers examining the nineteenth-century Catholic Highlands suggests that sources are an issue. The purpose of this present research note is to encourage Catholic historians to read Protestant sources against the grain in order to reassess the changing lives of Gaelicspeaking Roman Catholics. One such set of sources is the reports produced by Protestant educational organisations. These often include inspectors' accounts, the letters of teachers and the petitions of local inhabitants. Although Protestant, such societies were active in regions populated by Catholics. One such body, the Edinburgh Society for the Support of Gaelic Schools (ESSGS), was founded in 1811. Most of their voluminous reports can be found in Edinburgh's National Library of Scotland, although there are some in the Special Collections of Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Guelph University Libraries. Examining them for data about areas such as Barra, South Uist, Moidart, Knoydart and Strathglass has exposed a wealth of material. Naturally the reports discuss educational and religious 4 RITCHIE: Page 2 of 27 matters among Highland Catholics, but they also speak to how priests and people interacted; how different faith communities negotiated with each other; and about the social and economic lives of ordinary people. What follows will therefore focus on the material produced and collated by the ESSGS, in order to demonstrate the research possibilities of such records. (Detailed work on the papers of other Protestant educational and missionary societies is likely to be equally productive.) I shall introduce the ESSGS and discuss how historians can approach the annual reports. I shall also give a sample of the letters sent from predominantly Catholic parts of the Highlands and Islands, illustrating the nature of the material and suggesting possibilities for further research. Most of the transcribed extracts have been selected from the 1810s, 1820s, and 1830s, when the annual reports were at their fullest. In addition, this a significant period for historians of Highland Catholicism in three ways: it covers Catholic emancipation, the rise of Evangelical Presbyterianism in the north west, and the Clearances. The final section shows how such determinedly Protestant sources can be used by Catholic historians. At the most basic level they can provide new information. A case-study of the Small Isles shows how they can complement and question the sources most commonly used. A second case-study, of the central Highlands, demonstrates how they can provide new insights into how Catholic families and communities interacted with the religious and philanthropic agencies who intended to modify their culture. Despite the increasing poverty and political powerlessness of the sub-tenant classes, reading these sources against the grain shows how ordinary Catholic Highlanders exercised considerable agency in education and in religion.
A History of Catholic Education and Schooling in Scotland
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2019
A History of Catholic Education and Schooling in Scotland "The Education (Scotland) Act of 1918 has long suffered from undeserved neglect in the historical literature. Its centenary has now at length prompted fresh evaluation of this significant legislation in its broader social, religious and political context. In this new collection of essays, a wide array of perspectives are brought to bear, not only on the Act itself but also on its origins, implications and longer-term effects. This history has been largely hidden from view partly because of the dominance of the English tradition south of the border, but also because of the nature of religious conflict within Scotland. In this volume, the Catholic tradition in Scottish education is effectively unearthed and exhibited in full public view."
Journal of the Norther Renaissance, 2020
The SSPCK has been described as “the single most important institution of Anglicisation in the 1700s”. The Edinburgh-based charitable organisation (f. 1709) maintained charity schools in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, intended to evangelise and educate the largely Gaelic- speaking population. As the SSPCK resolved that children would be taught to read only the English Bible and, from 1716, it began advertising its progress towards “extirpating the Irish tongue”, most historiography highlights the SSPCK’s role “in devaluing Gaelic in the Highland mind”. This article re-evaluates the Society’s language policy both in terms of motivation and impact. It is argued that the established scholarship relies heavily on Society rhetoric — e.g. stereotypes of Highland ignorance/barbarity — thus obscuring the factors which gave rise to the SSPCK’s language policy and the ways in which Highland communities understood the purpose of schooling. It is argued that the SSPCK was initially open to teaching Gaelic in schools, but very few Gaels could read or write the language. After 1715, the SSPCK presented itself as a strictly anti-Gaelic agency, but made little progress in removing Gaelic. It is argued that schooling was more widespread in the Highlands pre-1709 than is generally acknowledged, and that many communities already regarded English as the language of literacy and education. This paper concludes that many communities desired an English education, and would likely have questioned the purpose of Gaelic literacy, not due to a ‘devalued’ opinion of Gaelic, but its continued functionality as a spoken language, complimented by English literacy.
From the 1810s into the 1830s evangelical missionaries worked among Scottish Highland Catholic communities with the cooperation and assistance of the people and their priests. The historiography of protestant-Catholic relations is dominated by conflict and that of nineteenth-century Scotland focuses on tension in the industrializing Lowlands. However, the key religious issue for Highland Catholics was the response to expansionist protestantism. The Edinburgh Society for the Support of Gaelic Schools (ESSGS) best epitomizes this movement. Letters from priests and the society's annual reports reveal how long-established rural Catholic communities reacted to missionary activity and how, building on the tense compromises of the eighteenth century, for a few decades evangelicals and Catholics cooperated effectively. The ESSGS learned to involve local priests, provide sympathetic teachers and modify the curriculum. Catholics drew on their experience as a disempowered minority by resisting passively rather than actively and by using the society's schools on their own terms. Many Catholic parents and clergy developed a modus vivendi with evangelicals through their common interest in educating children. The evidence of northwest Scotland demonstrates how a minority faith group and missionaries negotiated a satisfactory coexistence in a period of energetic evangelical activity across the British world.
Northern Scotland, vol. 13 (2022), 1-17
The first part of the article looked at schools and showed that a number of northern Highlanders, including from the lower tier of society, fully embraced the educational opportunities presented to them by the Crown. The second part uncovers the intellectual training of northern Highland women in a quite original and ground-breaking way. Then, access to university is explored to gauge numbers as well as social, geographical and kinship factors. Although not a common feature of the Scottish historiography of early-modern education, the role of apprenticeship was part and parcel of the formation of the youth at the time, including in the Highlands. Finally, by focusing on studies abroad undertaken by a number of northern Highlanders and the northern Highland patronage of education, it gives an insight into the importance granted by the local elite to education and participated in their integration into the wider Scottish and British society. It was these communities’ resources and their educational patronage that supported the whole system, which can only translate in a State formation of the collaborative type in terms of education, seen with its combination of ‘imperial’ features, with its impetus from the centre, and collaborative ones, with the cooperation of local society.