Vocational education is seldom considered as an internally complex field and as an outcome of wider educational, political and social programmes. Throughout the history of educational policy-making, debates on the nature, length and universality of primary education and on the challenges of reintegrating people into employment and education, have provided platforms for discussions about the distinctiveness of different forms of education (Heikkinen, 2004). The ways in which education systems develop reflect the structural contexts of the wider historical landscape. This is particularly true of vocational education where as a system it has developed alongside political and economic movements which give expression to different conceptions of the nation state. Vocational education is rarely considered within this type of framework in historical studies in the Irish context. A priority task of the new Irish Free State government in 1922 was to reform the educational system in its nationalistic, cultural and utilitarian aspects (Ryan, 1993). In the literature covering the history of Irish education during the first thirty years of the state, analysis has primarily focused on the primary and secondary school systems, particularly with reference to the promotion of Gaelic culture and the Irish language. Few historians have considered the development of vocational education in rural Ireland, and the ways it was utilized to promote the identity of the nation state in the context of the local community and family life. Drawing on a range of official and local sources (Department of Education Annual Reports, Department of Finance Reports, Dáil Debates, Dublin Diocesan Archives, Census Reports and the archives of four local VECs: Co Dublin, North Tipperary, Co Leitrim and Co Monaghan), combined with previous literature, this chapter argues that vocational education was used by government to reinforce the preferred image of the nation state in rural contexts in its early years of development, but as changing conceptions of nation identity began to emerge at the start of the 1950s, vocational education was not accorded the same role in the rural context but reflected a changing nation state identity through its own direct involvement in community development and adult education. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022. All rights reserved.
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