Snapshots of School/Scoil life in Ireland in the 1930s

Not everything about genealogy is finding all the ancestors, but how they may have lived. I am blessed to have a tree with many generations of teachers, but having spent part of my childhood in Ireland, including attending the school where my grandparents taught, I find school history is not only interesting, but help anchor one in the time and experience of the day.

I had a short stint in Dromagh as part of my childhood was spent in Cork and Dublin. And memories of cold classrooms and learning Irish, writing journals, spotting hedgehogs outside in the hedges along the fringes of the school grounds never seem far, despite the distance of time and an ocean.

There is a lovely collection online via dúchas.ie that serves as a time capsule for school life many decades ago.

The Schools' Manuscript collection (some found in UCD's online collection) is filled with fun reads, and a feel for the times...

Termed the Schools’ Folklore Scheme, it was conducted in 1937-38 in collaboration with the Department of Education and the Irish National Teachers' Organisation. Over a period of eighteen months some 100,000 children in 5,000 primary schools in the twenty-six counties of the Irish Free State were encouraged to collect material in their home districts on a wide range of subjects dealing with local tradition and history. The topics about which the children were instructed to research and write included local history and monuments, folktales and legends, riddles and proverbs, songs, customs and beliefs, games and pastimes, traditional work practices and crafts, etc. The children collected this material mainly from their parents and grandparents and other older members of the local community or school district. Now known as the Schools' Manuscript Collection, the scheme resulted in more than half a million manuscript pages of valuable material.Schoolchildren from participating schools in Munster and Connacht were encouraged to write topographical descriptions of their own locality.

Some examples of the gems you can find: