“An Ireland of Brave, Manly Boys, an Ireland of Pure, Modest Girls”: The Education System and the Regulation of Sexuality in Ireland, 1922–1968

By Judith Harford, and Tom O’Donoghue
Published in History of Education, January 2025.
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Abstract

This article examines how the Catholic Church, working hand in glove with the Irish State, used the education system in order to regulate Irish sexuality in the early decades of Irish independence. Through an analysis of a range of primary sources, interwoven with oral testimony, it argues that the dominance exercised by the Catholic Church in the organisational culture of schools, its control over the training of teachers and its suppression of a sex education curriculum, all contributed significantly to the regulation of sexuality in the period under review.