Spare the Rod: Punishment and the Moral Community of Schools

Abstract

space left for agency. This work is innovative in its attempt to draw on participants’ definitions of situations, while using a variety of sources and other conceptual tools. The book makes a significant scholarly contribution and opens a new way of writing about schooling and the Catholic Church in Ireland. On one side, there have been extremely critical writings that have not explored the complex dialectic of the relationship between church and state, the national question, and people’s own religiosity. On the other side, other works have placed great emphasis on congregations’ contributions to Catholic schooling without including a critical experiential viewpoint. This work brings some fresh perspectives to the issues. The book closes by moving to the future — “Looking backwards, looking forwards” (189) — toward a new approach to Catholic education. One that is pluralist and open to the world, involving new curricular approaches and a new understanding of piety. However, the authors make it clear that within the context of the expansion of education in Ireland, inequalities persist. Thus, they conclude by saying that Catholic secondary schools, just as their Protestant counterparts, continue to reproduce inequality, and that in spite of the significant changes that have taken place in Ireland since the 1960s, such as the movement away from a theocratic state and positive developments in the provision of secondary education, the Catholic Church continues to have significant control over this level of schooling. I am impressed by the scope and design of this research, and I am certain that it will have a privileged place in the literature on education and the Catholic Church. The authors skillfully integrate the structural elements, enrich the social analysis with contributions from cultural history, and go deep into subjective aspects and experiential testimonies. This book will be of great interest to historians of education, historians of the Catholic Church, and historians interested in Ireland. It will also attract the attention of theologians. In summary, it will be of interest to a variety of readers, and, notably, is a book that will cover a lacuna. I strongly recommend the reading of this book.