The Murder Machine and Other Essays

by Pádraic Pearse

Genres: Philosophy, Education, Irish Literature, Politics, Essays, Ireland, History

96 pages, Paperback

About the author

Pádraig Pearse (born Patrick Henry Pearse) was an Irish teacher, barrister, poet, writer, nationalist and political activist who was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916. He was declared "President of the Provisional Government" of the Irish Republic in one of the bulletins issued by the Rising's leaders, a status that was however disputed by others associated with the rebellion both then and subsequently. Following the collapse of the Rising and the execution of Pearse, along with his brother (Willie Pearse) and fourteen other leaders, Pearse came to be seen by many as the embodiment of the rebellion.

Reviews

[AJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the online text via http://celt.ucc.ie 'The Murder Machine' (50 pages) excluding other essays. When jumping into this article the expectation of wading through heavy nationalistic propaganda was already at the forefront of my mind, yet once finished I came out with the feeling as though I had just read (with some exception) the story of my public school education.

Over a hundred years later educational systems as described by Pearse of the English kind in Ireland of which Pearse so deeply resented not only persist, but seem to have moved further and further towards the anti-ideal he coined "The Murder Machine".

Sounds a bit extreme doesn't it? I agree it does, and I will admit the first 1/4 of the text is laden with denunciation of in his view an oppressive English school system that dominated Ireland at that time. However about half way through things began to sound familiar in regards to the issues of how the system fails some and misses its mark to inspire and produce people rather than "ready made" "things".

Pearse not only offers his ample criticism, but some seemly reasonable solutions as well. Solutions I think both those who would espouse similar positions in favor of the freedom to provide alternate educational methods and those who prefer a standardized state controlled curriculum would benefit in considering.

Pearse's militarism combined with his insistence on a restoration of national identity, cultural and spiritual is fascist, yet ironically this is the foundation he lays for localized, individualistic freedom of instruction, right along side total support for the profession of teaching (salaries included), and the Montessori model. I think that's a bit of a blend to swallow for the political extremes of Right and Left of the present day.

Pearse's ideas on the freedom of the pupil to learn naturally, the freedom of the teacher to teach their profession, and the de-standardization of academic achievement could be a way to ensure future generations aren't just statistics to be interrupted by the consolidators of big data experimentation.

[John McDermott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here comes a convoluted introduction...

So I was away at the weekend in the west of Ireland. Specifically, in a place called Lahinch, Clare and on the Atlantic coast of Ireland. I was there celebrating a friend's stag party and in the midst of the celebrations I managed to stumble upon two quite interesting individuals in Kenny's Bar.

As I walked into the bar, there in front of me at the was a man with a map open atop the counter, and a woman providing directions and information. I decided in my merry state to interrupt the proceedings, as I'm always interested in hearing people's travel tales.

I made the mistake of assuming the man was American as soon as I heard his accent - he was in fact Canadian. I quickly rectified my error and soon enough I had built a friendly rapport with both him and the woman, who happened to be a local native of Lahinch.

She was a very wise woman, in her fifties, and well able to drink a whisky. As soon as she established that my mind was a liberal and independent-thinking one, she was happy to divulge into subjects with her own theories and opinions. It turned out she was a retired teacher of 25 years, but she also indirectly told me she didn't necessarily retire at an age where she was happy to finish working. In fact, she told me she absolutely hated the education system in which she operated and how it confines the student, and simply breeds them to become cogs in the system.

This was the topic of the conversation you see. As it happened I also told her one of my historical idols was P.H. Pearse, especially since I grew up 500m away from where he founded his St. Enda's school. Once she had established this fact, and also went into this topic of conversation about the education system in Ireland she asked me;

'Have you read The Murder Machine?'

I regrettably told her I had not, even though with Pearse as my idol, I really should have. She was disappointed, but told me to read it as soon as possible.

So, as a kept promise to this random but inspiring Lahinch local whom I spoke to for only a couple of hours, I decided to read this essay today.

I was not disappointed. I know how passionate a writer Pearse was already, so I knew I was going to be reading something with real substance, which would have a powerful message. But really it was probably exactly the essay I needed to read at this point in my life. Lots of the educational topics that Pearse discusses and points he makes in this critical essay of the British eduaction system in pre-independent Ireland, even though 100 years old now, are still as fresh and resounding criticisms of the education system in place in Ireland, and elsewhere in western States.

Pearse believes that education should fundamentally be about fostering, that the student and the teacher should both be free to learn and educate, that the teacher should provide inspiration to his/her pupils using mythological figures if necessary, but certainly through the idolisation of heroes.

Many of these arguments he makes, have been swimming around my head for a long, long time, without any real structure or foundations. His writing in this essay reaffirm my own beliefs and thoughts about the ills of the education system in my world, and undoubtedly that existed in his world. The education system is there to groom people to fit into society, within the paths of the society that expects well educated people to take up good professions in normal life. It doesn't teach people to think, to challenge what is taught. You succeed in this education system if you can verbatim learn-off what is written in your course books. And isn't that wrong?

That's what Pearse believes, and the ideas he brings together in this writing really does question the whole role and definition of education. As far as Pearse is concerned, and I would agree, the level or quality of education receive now in this world is no better, perhaps even worse than the education in Ancient Greece or Ancient Ireland. There, it was the personality and wisdom of the teachers that drew people from afar to learn. Nowadays teachers are simply civil servants of the State, following the State's education ethos, where students should fit into the education system, which has been carefully created through governmental policy. Genuine talents are overlooked if students don't fit into the system, and Pearse finds this extremely saddening. He summarises the whole philosophy of education in a maxim, borrowed from what a colleague of his said:

‘If boy shows an aptitude for doing anything better than most
people, he should be encouraged to do that, and to do it as well as possible. I don t care what it is - Hopscotch if you like.'

It's a real enlightening short essay on the ills of the education systems we accept. The education system today isn't any better than it was 100 years ago, and that will definitely disappoint the spirit of Pearse. But generations upon generations will pass on his pedagogy and spirit, and hopefully the ideals of how he believes education should work can be put into place slowly but surely.

[Jakob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pearse is a bit overly Catholic and veers into talking nonsense a few times throughout the essay, but he still provides a very sharp criticism of the tendency of bourgeois education to treat students as profitable commodities rather than developing their critical faculties and giving them an education worthy of human beings.

"When one uses the term education system as the name of the system of schools, colleges, universities, and what not which the English have established in Ireland, one uses it as a convenient label, just as one uses the term government as a convenient label for the system of administration by police which obtains in Ireland instead of a government.

There is no education system in Ireland. The English have established the simulacrum of an education system. but its object is the precise contrary of the object of an education system. Education should foster; this education is meant to repress. Education should inspire; this education is meant to tame. Education should harden; this education is meant to enervate. The English are too wise a people to attempt to educate the Irish, in any worthy sense. As well expect them to arm us.

Professor Eoin Mac Neill has compared the English education system in Ireland to the system of slave education which existed in the ancient pagan republics side by side with the systems intended for the education of freemen. To the children of the free were taught all noble and goodly things which would tend to make them strong and proud and valiant; from the children of the slaves all such dangerous knowledge was hidden. They were taught not to be strong and proud and valiant, but to be sleek, to be obsequious, to be dexterous: the object was not to make them good men, but to make them good slaves. And so in Ireland. The education system here was designed by our masters in order to make us willing or at least manageable slaves. It has made of some Irishmen not slaves merely, but very eunuchs, with the indifference and cruelty of eunuchs; kinless being, who serve for pay a master that they neither love nor hate."

[Fionnbharr Rodgers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pearse’s ideas on education were so stunningly ahead of his time, that they’re ahead of our time; there is a lot here that fans of Ken Robinson will recognise, in the idea of education systems that ignore the organic nature of life and try to knock children into a narrow, linear trajectory.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This indictment of British education in Ireland is really a thinly-veiled manifesto for radical change by one of the signatories of the Irish Declaration of Independence from Britain, and a martyr in the blood-thirsty British reaction to the 1916 Easter Uprising.

Pearse charges the English with taking away their language and traditions (see my own book, Printing, Literacy, and Education in Eighteenth Century Ireland: Why the Irish Speak English for more information), usurping Irish sovereignty, creating foreign social, political, and cultural institutions, and then educating (or "re-educating") the Irish to administer them, essentially alien institutions, administered by alienated people -- all in their own land.

The "murder" Pearse refers to is a spiritual murder -- a murder of the soul.

Read it. And seethe.

It is available in electronic form at the CELT (Corpus of ELectronic Texts) site.

[Garion Bracken · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a paper by Padraic Pearse on the education system in Ireland pre-liberation. It's interesting how much of it still holds true. Worth a read for anyone who has gripes with the school system.