Teachers Themselves

Teacher and Trailblazer: A Conversation with Áine Hyland Part 1

• Dublin West Education Support Centre • Season 2 • Episode 6

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Áine Hyland is a name synonymous with educational reform in Ireland and we are honoured to have had her as a guest on the Teachers Themselves podcast. 

Wrapping up Season 2, the conversation between Áine and our host, Ultan Mac Mathúna, was so captivating that we have made it available in two parts. 

Join us as Áine recounts her vibrant tapestry of experiences, weaving through the milestones of a storied career that has shaped Irish education. Áine's journey from the grassroots of teaching to her remarkable tenure as an Emeritus Professor of Education and former Vice President of UCC is a narrative steeped in personal and professional triumphs. Her voice carries the legacy of Ireland's educational evolution, a tale of resilience and pioneering spirit against the backdrop of a nation's cultural and societal metamorphosis.

We highly recommend listening to both parts of this conversational episode. Highlighting Áine's impact on the landscape of Irish education, the indelible marks she left serve as a testament to her commitment to shaping the future of learning in Ireland. As we honour Áine Hyland's legacy, we are reminded that her story is not merely a reflection of the past but a beacon guiding us toward the future of education in Ireland.

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Teachers Themselves is a DWEC original, produced and created by Dublin West Education Centre produced by Zita Robinson.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Fáilte stát and welcome to the Teachers Themselves podcast. I'm your host, Ultan Mac Mathúna. This podcast is brought to you by Dublin West Education Centre. We're located on the grounds of TUD Tallaght, serving and supporting the school communities of West Dublin and beyond. Welcome to season two of Teachers Themselves. Episodes this season will feature informal chats with some of the experienced, dedicated educators who are working in Irish schools and the broader education sector. People who are making a big difference to the world of education in Ireland.

Áine Hyland:

And I was always interested in education. As I said to my sister the other day, education is in our DNA. That's what we talked about all the time as we were growing up, because my father was very interested, naturally, and my mother in education, so education is very deep in my DNA.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

You're very welcome to this episode of Teachers Themselves, the podcast by teachers for teachers. Today it is my great pleasure to introduce Áine Hyland. Áine is Emeritus Professor of Education and former Vice President of UCC. She's been active in education circles in Ireland and internationally for over 50 years. She was a civil servant in the Department of Ed in the 60s but had to resign on marriage.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

She subsequently qualified as a secondary school teacher and taught for a number of years before being appointed as a senior lecturer in education in UCD and subsequently professor of education in UCC. Among other things, she was a founder member of the Dalkey School Project back in the 70s. She was also chair and secretary with Educate Together and she's been widely published, has papers and books published on the history of Irish education, education policy, education disadvantage curriculum and assessment. She's a member of the Royal Irish Academy and in recognition of her contribution to Irish education she's been awarded a number of honorary doctorates, and the name Áine Hyland is well known to anybody who's been in education for the last 50 or 60 years, and it is my great pleasure and honour to welcome Áine.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Thank you very much and just to give a bit of a precursor to it. I happened to bump into Áine for lunch at an event and I was so taken with her knowledge, her wisdom, but possibly more importantly, her sense of divilment, that I said we must have you for the podcast. So, Áine, thanks so much for agreeing to this.

Áine Hyland:

And thanks for inviting me, Ultan. I'm delighted to be on.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Áine, what I start with normally with my guests is to try and find out how the place they're from made them the person they are Now. You were born in Athboy, but you moved up to Dublin then, Isn't that correct?

Áine Hyland:

Well, we moved a lot. We moved long before that. I mean, my father was a school principal, principal of the National School in Athboy when I was born, in the early 40s. But the family grew and, to quote my father as if he had nothing to do with it as the family grew he had to look for a better job and he applied for the inspectorate. So in 1948, my father was appointed as a national school inspector and we were moved to Cavan and after Cavan we went to Ennis because inspectors were moved every five years so that they didn't become too friendly with the local teachers or the local people, and that was also true about bank managers and sergeants. So sergeants and bank managers and school inspectors were always moved every four or five years.

Áine Hyland:

Very difficult for my mother, but she went along as all mothers did in those days. There were 13 children in the family. I was the third eldest and I was always looking after small children and I was always interested in education. As I said to my sister the other day, education is in our DNA. That's what we talked about all the time as we were growing up, because my father was very interested, naturally, and my mother in education. So education is very deep in my DNA.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

In your DNA. But originally teaching wasn't for you, Áine. You went to Carysfort.

Áine Hyland:

I went to Carysfort. I always wanted to be a teacher.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

It was the training college, just for girls.

Áine Hyland:

Yeah, I always wanted to be a teacher. I was very clear about that. That was what I wanted to do. But in 1959, when I did my leaving cert, we were living in Ennis at the time and, very sadly, the previous year my brother had been killed in an accident in Ennis and my mother was very unhappy. She didn't want to stay in Ennis and my father got a transfer to Dublin.

Áine Hyland:

So I was to have gone to Mary Immaculate College in Limerick but because my father got moved to Dublin, I was allocated to Carysfort College, which was the primary teacher training college for girls in those days, and I was very unhappy there because my parents lived. They moved to Dublin with all the little children, all my little brothers and sisters, whom I loved, but we had to be boarders. We were not allowed to be day pupils in Carysfort in those days. So I found that very difficult. I found it very difficult. My parents weren't very far away but I was locked up in Carysfort and also, as I mentioned in an article, at that time Carysfort wasn't the happiest place to be and if you talk to teachers of my generation, very few of them loved being in Carysfort. And in fact, when Carysfort was closed by the government in the 1980s.

Áine Hyland:

I happened to be a member of staff in the college at that stage, but we couldn't get very many signatures to save it. We thought we'd ask all the past students if they would sign up to save it. They said you can't close a day too soon, but that was back in the 50s and 60s. It changed dramatically in the 70s, but I was gone by then, so I stayed only three months. I was offered. I had done what was then called the Junior X, the executive officer exam for the civil service, and because I was an Irish speaker, I was a fluent Irish speaker. We spoke Irish at home, not English, and so I was actually allocated to the Department of Education in December 1959, where all the work was done through the medium of Irish at that time, and I left Carysfor t.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

So the Department of Education. Their work was done through the medium of Irish back then.

Áine Hyland:

It was indeed yes.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

And am I right in saying and I read the article to which you referred there that because you'd got the honour in maths in the lead exert, they said well, maybe the statistics office was a good spot for you. Is that correct?

Áine Hyland:

yeah, well, I was actually in the buildings branch for the first two years. What happened was when the investment in education report the team to work they were an you know, there was an economist, a statistician and two economists, a statistician, a sociologist and an inspector from the department, because economics and statistics would be fairly strong in that report. It was the first time that a real, what we would now call an evidence-based approach was being taken to education. I had honours maths in the Leaving Cert and I was the HR. People decided I'd be the right person to act as a research assistant, so I was transferred, but I was still a civil servant, of course.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

It was the first real look at data. That's right, it was the first data and exactly evidence-based.

Áine Hyland:

Really, ireland had become a member of what is now the OECD and there were a number of countries which were participating in educational planning Something we could do with, again, I think, having heard the minister on the radio about lack of places and lack of teachers. So it was decided that an in-depth analysis should be done of the effectiveness of education and in Ireland that happened. At the same time the mass had refocused, if you like, the country towards a much more economic success, I suppose, and TK Whittaker? He had also written about the economic future of Ireland. So this report was to look at how education could or might influence the economy, employment and so on.

Áine Hyland:

Now, a lot of educationists were very critical of that at the time and said what about the philosophy?

Áine Hyland:

Because there was a very strong focus on Catholic philosophy and so on, and the suggestion that any report would look at education from an economic or statistical point of view was frowned on.

Áine Hyland:

And nevertheless it went ahead and as the reports had huge influence subsequently, because up until then there was genuinely I mean I grew up with the genuine feeling that we had the best education system in the world, because people inside the system teachers and inspectors and civil servants in the department believed we had the best education system and we didn't, as my late husband said. As Bill said, he had worked with the UN. So he came back on secondment from the UN in New York in the statistical office to help with the statistical analysis and he persuaded the department to engage in some of these what are now the PISA and those type of tests on the basis Well, let's find out how much better we are than all the other countries. Well, let's find out how much better we are than all the other countries. So on that basis he persuaded the then Secretary General of the Department to engage in this international analysis.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

You refer to Popper's Open Society in that document. If our civilization is to survive we must break the habit of deference to great men. So I suppose back then yourself and Bill were trying to break that habit of deference to great men. So I suppose back then you were, yourself and Bill were trying to break that habit of deference. Well, I have to say it was Bill.

Áine Hyland:

Bill was never as anybody who knew him would tell you. He was never in deference to great men and in particular he was never in deference to the church or indeed to the state. I remember Paddy Lynch, who chaired the investment in education, saying to him you, bill Highland, have no respect either for the church or for the state. So I, but I, was quite a conformist young person. I mean I was very young, of course, I was only what. I was 20 when I was started to work in the. I was only 17 when I started to work in the department Like when I think of it now 17. But I thought I was quite old. I'd done my leaving cert. I of it now 17, but I thought I was quite old. I'd done my leaving cert. I'd done very well.

Áine Hyland:

I had spent three months in Carysfort. I was sorry that I wasn't going directly into teaching, but I always felt there was always an evening degree. You see, in UCD, as soon as I'd be 22, I could do an evening degree and then I could gradually move and there were ways and means. There were always other pathways and I mean that's what I find interesting today. I still wanted to be a teacher. But first of all I had got the job in the department. It was good money, I could live at home, help with the 10 younger children, all of that and I didn't anticipate I would fall in love. That was the unexpected move. My plan at that stage was to do an evening degree and gradually go back into teaching.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

So you're skipping ahead there. So I just want to go through the things here. The crack regiment really was put together to do this first data analysis, but to draw first, to get the data together and then analyze it for investment in education. And I love the piece in that paper where you're describing there was a computer. A comptometer A comptometer Up in Harcourt Street and in the evening times after work.

Áine Hyland:

Oh, sorry, that was the computer. Sorry, no, that was a computer, but you look at the punched cards.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

That's right, I think it was Harcourt Street and it's like something from a movie. And and it's like something from a movie and it's just fantastic. And I just see this dashing young girl who's got full of women vigor bringing this stuff up and kid clap on the heels and maybe a nice hat, and up to the parkway street and things were really happening and there must have been a great buzz and energy and I know you worked really hard. You worked until midnight many, many times to try and get this over the line, but it was very exciting, but it was very exciting.

Áine Hyland:

Yes, it was very exciting. I mean it was shocking to me initially when the results began to come through because I genuinely did think we had an excellent education system. Of course I was aware, as any of us who had gone to a national school, we knew that half of the class of the sixth class didn't go on to secondary school. We knew that because, of course, secondary school wasn't free. But I didn't really think that much about those girls who mostly became maids or went to England to work or whatever. They were very poorly educated.

Áine Hyland:

But for those of us I suppose we were privileged to went ahead and went on to secondary school. We felt we were getting a good education and in many ways we were denial about Considerable poverty, school buildings with no running water, no electricity, no toilets, 50% of the young people having left school before they were 14 years of age, and all this reality was coming through in the statistics. And I was always interested in mathematics. As I say, I was one of the very few girls who did honours maths in leaving CERT, so I understood the reality of statistics and of a statistical analysis.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

So you were involved in very exciting work. You probably felt you were going to help to change things here. And then, as you referred to earlier, Cupid struck an arrow and you fell in love.

Áine Hyland:

I fell in love with Bill exactly, and that was actually a real scandal, because then in the civil service if a girl was known to be walking out with a man in the same department she'd be moved to another section because it wasn't the done thing to be there Apart from anything else. Girls in those days were generally regarded as an occasion of sin for the men. So we had to stay, not to tempt a man. But fortunately from my point of view, because I obviously, apart from being in love, I was also very, very interested in the work I was doing and Paddy Lynch, who was Paddy, was the chief. He was in charge of the investment in education.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

And he'd been brought into the department from.

Áine Hyland:

That's right. He was a lecturer in economics in UCD and he also was on the board of Aer Lingus at one stage. So he was a very good economist, a very, very nice man, a gentleman, and he just said to the what are now called the HR people that I wasn't to be moved because I really understood all the data and I was working on the data and I was the kind of the back.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

You had been brought into the establishment office to have a chat about this.

Áine Hyland:

I was brought that was what it was called. Hr was called establishment at that time and the establishment officer, who was actually a nice man and he was well-intentioned he and another chief inspector he wasn't the chief inspector, he was an assistant chief inspector they called me in and advised me not to go out with Bill. That it wasn't really a good idea. He was 18 years older than me, of course, if you think about it now that he was a man of the world and I was a convent girl. That was the phrase they used. So they advised me not to develop a relationship with him. However, paddy Lynch intervened and they did tell me I would have to be moved from the section and I took this for granted. I mean, girls in those days accepted all that. You know it's hard looking back on it now, but that was how we were in culture.

Áine Hyland:

That was it, and you just got on with it and you got on with it exactly but I didn't have to move, fortunately, and we effectively managed to finish the report within the two-year period that it had been that had been, given it was at the printers. Printing was very slow in those days, so it took a while before it was actually printed. It was almost a year later before it was printed, but the work was all done and most of it was drafted by the summer of 1964.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

So at that stage, so that work is done, you're 22, 23. That's right Already. You said Carysfort isn't for me. I'm out of here. You've done a good job in the civil service. You've been eyeballed as somebody who's got plenty of go and brains and ability and brought into this you know, new task force. You've done really really well. You worked really really hard and despite the cultural norms, whatever you caught at the time, you said no, I love that man and I'm going to stay with that man that's right.

Áine Hyland:

Where did you get?

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

the backbone for all that, because that takes considerable love love, love ism love.

Áine Hyland:

What do they say? Love is a many. I don't know what the phrase is yeah exactly.

Áine Hyland:

And there was the other aspect as well, you see. It was that I had worked, say, for three years, in the buildings branch. Now, buildings branch was never the most exciting place to work, although I found it interesting. I found anything I ever did interesting. I always managed to make it interesting, but it wouldn't be regarded as hugely exciting. Then this two years was really interesting, really exciting, and I would have been returning back into the department itself. I didn't know what section I'd be put back into, but the investment education was effectively over, you see. So that wasn't going to continue. But where did Áine Hyland get?

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

the character to do all these things at such a young age.

Áine Hyland:

Well, we were Put down a marker several times.

Áine Hyland:

Yeah, because we were, I suppose. Well, my sisters would be similar. I have seven sisters. Thank God they're all alive and most of them in teaching, and many of whose names you'll know. But since we all use our married names, people don't know we're sisters.

Áine Hyland:

Because if you're brought up as one of 13 children and you know life in Ireland in the 40s and the 50s was tough you know it wasn't an easy life. My mother was a wonderful woman. She was absolutely amazing. My father we was on a pedestal. We had idolized my father, but you could never disturb your father like he was correcting exam papers or he was doing this or doing that. My father had quite a protected life. My mother worked really hard. An amazing woman, as many Irish women were totally unrecognized and not particularly well educated, but not badly educated either. She had done her leaving search. She'd been a junior civil servant before she married my father. You know, life wasn't easy and, like I remember at the age of about nine, from the time I was a child it's quite small there were always younger brothers and sisters whom we were given one each to look after.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

So I always look.

Áine Hyland:

And I remember another inspector coming to the door when I was about eight or nine and he said I answered the door, had my apron on and I was minding a baby. And I remember him saying 'Áine bocht, i gConaí ag obair' . But I didn't see life that way way. I was i gconaí ag obair as he thought we had no childhood in that sense. But that wasn't unusual. There was no concept of childhood or teenage years in the 40s and 50s.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

It was a luxury you couldn't afford

Áine Hyland:

It was a luxury we couldn't afford exactly and you got hand-me-down clothes and all the things like that. And I suppose, ironically, although marriage hadn't been on my agenda, as I say, my plan had been I had started doing the evening degree at that stage. So my plan had been to do the evening degree, probably do the HDIP. There was always a one-year course, you see the graduate course, and that was there. Even then, when there was a shortage of teachers, the department would switch on that tap, if you like, and take in some graduates. So I felt that that opportunity might come up anyway and if I wanted to be a primary teacher I could do the one year course or I could do the HDIP to be a secondary teacher. So that was what my plan was. But obviously, as I say, when I fell in love, that didn't happen. But when I went out, bill had. He had gone back to the UN, but this time he had been sent to Geneva and he was working in the Economic Commission for Europe.

Áine Hyland:

I went out very shortly after that and I did get a job. I decided I had two weeks holidays and I'd see if I could get a job, and so I got a job in the International Labour Office in the statistical section there and of course, by Irish standards, I had thought I was very well paid back in Ireland. I was paid nine pounds a week as an executive officer, which was very good pay in those days. It was almost as good as a national school teacher. I forget what they were paid, but I go to Geneva and I just walked into the HR people and said I didn't even have a written CV.

Áine Hyland:

When I think about it now, the naivety of it. I had nothing, no certificates, anything, but I just said I'm looking for a job. I had to go to an international office because in those days you had to have a visa to work as an ordinary citizen in Geneva, to get a work permit or a living permit. You couldn't do that just like that. I could go into any of the international organizations and there are quite a few of them in Geneva. At that time there still are. And he said to me well, we'll take you for six weeks if you start next Monday. We need somebody in the statistics office. So a series of short contracts before I got a longer contract and I was well paid by Irish standards. So that was my problem solved, as I thought.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

And I suppose it's important to point out to some of our listeners who may not remember if you'd have been married in Ireland back then. Oh, I'd have had to. Exactly, I should have said that, of course, Of course.

Áine Hyland:

And I took that for granted. You see, at this stage Bill had proposed we were engaged and very respectable, and the engagement notice went into the Irish Times. Bill very respectable, and the engagement notice went into the Irish Times. Bill wanted it all to be done respectably. My father didn't. My parents didn't approve, of course at all, as you can imagine, and my father knew Bill quite well because they were colleagues in the department. You see, my father was at this stage working on the Bontus Cainte ironically, he was the author of Bontus Cainte and he was working as a senior inspector in the department and Bill was regarded, as I said at the beginning as well. He was definitely a nonconformist, but he also was not a respecter of authority. On the other hand, my father and all the inspectors as were and still are, of course, they are the establishment, they are the authority, and so Bill's questioning of everything was not something my father was very happy about, as you can imagine.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

So that didn't make my life any easier. You know this was something you could take. You know going against authority was something you could take lightly. It's true to say that the department kept files on people who were seen as thorns in their side. Isn't that correct?

Áine Hyland:

It did indeed. Yes, there was a specialist filing cabinet in the secretary's office. There would be. For example, if you had been a problem, there'd be a code, code Mac Mahona I can remember the names of some of them. Code Cannon Pat Cannon had set up a lay Catholic secondary school in Dublin, sandy Mount High School, which the bishops had opposed at the time, and so there was a code I remember. Now, of course, I took the Official Secrets Act so I shouldn't be telling all these secrets, but I'd love to know where all those files are.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

You'd love to get your hands on those files.

Áine Hyland:

Yeah, they would have been very, very interesting, but they weren't in the main filing area, they weren't easily accessible.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

We're in Acuna Specialta.

Áine Hyland:

Acuna Specialta.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

So sorry, I'm just fascinated with the story. So, yourself and Bill, you're in Geneva.

Áine Hyland:

Things are going well, we're working.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Exactly, You've had your first child.

Áine Hyland:

That's right, yes, and of course I didn't have to give up work, because that was the biggest surprise of all. I remember when I went to the HR office when Bill and I got married, to tell them I had got married, and they more or less shrugged their shoulders and said so what? And I suppose, even though strictly speaking, I probably knew At one level I knew because you didn't have to, in Geneva and there was a married woman working in the same office as I was. So I knew that. But at another level I was so conditioned to expect life to change after marriage that at least I felt I had to tell them.

Áine Hyland:

And I have to say the one thing at that stage, the conditioning when Fiona was born I couldn't go back that I wasn't able to overcome. I couldn't imagine a mother leaving a child. That was the conditioning, if you like, of the time. You see, I would never have seen the marriage ban had come in in the late 30s, 36, 37. So everybody whom I grew up with had mothers who were at home. Nobody I knew had a working mother, you know. So it was inconceivable, it was just not something I could even imagine.

Áine Hyland:

That mothers worked, married women. A little bit different, I suppose, although again, of course I never saw a married woman working in Ireland, but mothers I never saw working at any stage. It's something I try to explain now to young, to my students. When I was talking they couldn't imagine this, that I didn't have some kind of a resentment against the fact that I wasn't working. It was just part and parcel of our upbringing and of our schooling that as soon as you got married you gave up work Full stop, no discussion. And then I saw this different world in Geneva. But by that stage Bill had been invited to come back to Ireland to work as a permanent civil servant in the Department of Education. So you came home.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

We came home and you were rearing a family.

Áine Hyland:

Yeah, and at the same time I was finishing my degree at night in UCD and the following year, even though I had two children at that stage I decided I would do the HDIP because the rumor was around that it was going to become a two-year course. That was 1969. So I thought I'd better do it while it's a one-year course and I can manage one year, but I wouldn't easily be able to manage two years. So I did the HDIP in Trinity, not in UCD, because at the time there were huge Seamus Cannon often will talk about. Do you know Seamus? Yes, and he was doing the HDIP. There were something like 500 students.

Áine Hyland:

Suddenly there was a big, big free education had just come in and there was a real need. Free education came in in 67. I did the HDIP in 69. So there were huge numbers doing the HDIP in UCD. I think he mentioned something like three or four hundred and the lecture theatre would only take 150. So I knew that and it didn't have a marvellous reputation at that time. The HDIP in UCD. And so Trinity had they had a very good HDIP at that stage. Only small numbers there. And you see, I had it because I had an evening degree. It was a past degree, as you probably remember that. You may not remember that, but yeah no, all of us.

Áine Hyland:

John Coulahan, for example, was would have been the same all of my generation.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

All you slackers, no we weren't allowed we weren't allowed to do an honors degree wow, okay, no, we weren't allowed to do that.

Áine Hyland:

No, no absolutely no, you. That was actually part and parcel of the rules. But it was good that there was an evening degree. At least it was an evening degree, but it was only a general degree. You couldn't do an honors degree at night, so I had only a past degree.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

You got your degree and you did go teaching in a second school.

Áine Hyland:

Yeah, I did. I got my degree, got my headship and I taught then in a school, a church of Ireland school, nearby here, which is now because it was close, very close by near my house in Llanegiri it's now Rathdown, it was Hillcourt in those days. I did my teaching practice there the year I was doing the dip and I I got hours. I didn't work full-time there, I worked part-time there. Saturday mornings were still quite common. That's something this generation also forgets. Most schools had a five-and-a-half-day week and the civil service had a five-and-a-half-day week. So we all worked a five-and-a-half-day week. But anyway, I worked for a number of years about six years, I think part time. Then I had done the MEd. John Coulahan was lecturing in Cary's Fort. John was a great mentor for me. He was absolutely a man I hugely admired. I don't know if you knew John. He was a professor of education.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Oh sure, we know all John, we all knew John.

Áine Hyland:

He really was my academic mentor, although we were the same age, but he had just finished his PhD when when I was doing the MEd and he was a huge support and he asked me to do some tutorials in Carysfort. And anyway, to cut a long story short, in 1980, in 1980, I was appointed to a senior lecturer job in Carysfort and that was a very interesting one because I had applied I was lecturing part time and teaching part time, finished my HDIP, started to work on my PhD and reared three children. I had a third child by this stage. I liked Carysfort.

Áine Hyland:

By this stage we had Sister Regina who was the new principal. She was a wonderful head president of the college and she had transformed the college from this awful place where I had left as a student in 1959. She had come in, introduced three-year degree course around that time and she transformed literally. It was a wonderful place. Seamus Heaney was head of English. We had some wonderful people there. John Coulahan was head of education and John asked me to do some tutorials when I was doing my PhD. I hadn't finished my PhD by this stage. Then John got the full time lecture job in UCD and there was a vacancy in Carysfort and I got that job.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

And thus began an illustrious career in the tertiary and thus began my career in the tertiary level.

Áine Hyland:

And I had been teaching for about six or seven years before that. I had three children at this stage and they were like my youngest had moved into first class, I mean when she was an infant. So I was able to take on a full time job more easily at that stage.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

And how did you end up there?

Áine Hyland:

in UCD. Ironically, what happened then? I was in Carysfort. I loved working. It was a lovely place to work. At this stage it was totally different. It was like a completely different place. But then I started to work there in 1980.

Áine Hyland:

And in 1986, the government decided to close down Carysfort. And because Carysfort was being closed, I have to say I thought our trade union argued very effectively that we couldn't just be thrown out. The original plan was oh, get rid of all the staff and the government will save money. But it turned out that, well, the same as national schools, in some ways we were employed. The archbishop was the manager of the school and we were employed by him. But unlike teachers, who got their check from the department, we got our check from the archbishop, if you like. So we were a more direct employee than teachers were. And the department thought that because of that, that they had no responsibility for us and that we could just all be made redundant. But thanks to our union at the time, our PRSI hadn't been paid. The full PRSI hadn't been paid ever, because the nuns had always assumed, like the schools, that we were on the different PRSI and that was your saving grace.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

That was our saving grace.

Áine Hyland:

That's why I've always advised teachers always join a union. So because of that, what happened then? I don't the university didn't like it at all, but all the universities, their jobs were frozen. We became a panel, almost just like the National School panel. In other words, the department created a panel and all the careers for academic staff were put on that panel. The department created a panel and all the Careers for Academic Staff were put on that panel and no jobs could be filled by universities or a state body. I was actually offered a job as an inspector at that stage as well. Anywhere they could redeploy us. There were 80 or 100 of us to be redeployed. Now I always say that's why I was keen afterwards. People, we were looked down on a little bit by the universities as somehow of a lower status that we had been shall we say Drafted in rather than yeah, exactly, drafted in exactly.

Áine Hyland:

And in fact the agreement was that we could never apply for an internal promotion in the universities. I guess our union accepted that as the best they could do, you know so a lot of us.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

All these union deals are compromises. I suppose, yeah, you always have to have compromises.

Áine Hyland:

Exactly. But we were allowed, of course, to apply for open posts. So when the professorship came up in Cork in 1993, I applied for that job as a professor, in my own right, you know, and I got the job because I always felt in UCD you know that was the reality. There was that perception that somehow I mean UCD initially didn't want to accept us and they said straight out they might allow us to lecture for first years, but not any degree people. So there was a lot of snobbery, academic snobbery, going on, even though I had a PhD at that stage. I had already got my PhD in 1982. So, and some of my colleagues in the education department in UCD didn't have PhDs. So, and not that that's a big deal, but you know what I mean, but still it's a marker. It was a marker, exactly, but you went then to Cork, I went to Cork then.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

At what age were the family at that stage?

Áine Hyland:

They were grown up. You see, my children were born in the 60s Fiona, 66, 67 and 93. Or sorry, 73. So by 1990, the two eldest were working. Basically Fiona was in the States and Niamh was. She was a lawyer and she was in Brussels, and Sonia was in Finnish secondary school and going to university. So they were effectively grown up and Bill had retired. That was the real marker. In a way he had retired. He was 65 and he had retired and he was a cork man.

Áine Hyland:

I had reservations about going to cork, I have to say, but he didn't because he was a cork man. I had reservations about going to cork, I have to say, but he didn't, because he was a cork graduate and a cork man. So we went to cork in 93, but very sadly he got cancer at that stage. The year as I left Dublin to go to cork I realized he had terminal cancer. So that was really really tough. The first three years in cork were very tough because he had cancer and he died in 1996. And then I was on my own in Cork. Then, as I said in a foreign translator, are you a Cork man?

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

No, I'm certainly not. No, I'm certainly not.

Áine Hyland:

So that was very difficult initially because when I went first, bill knew Cork well, he knew the university, he knew people there, you know, and some of his family were still there. But when he died, then the girls were in Dublin. I was in Cork but I settled there. Though I mean, we bought a house and I settled there. I wasn't going to do what some people might have done be half in one and half in the other.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

No, I didn't. I never did that. You were all in on it. I was always all in.

Áine Hyland:

Yeah well, I always was like that If I was going to take on something, I would take it on 100% and I did settle. And, particularly when I was head of education, there were changes I would have liked to make. I learned a lot about being a leader, school leadership. How much can you change it? It was a very good education department but at the same time, the HDIP, as you probably remember, wouldn't have had compared to primary education. I mean, the BEd was a great degree and still is, whereas the old HDIP, well, it was a very, very busy qualification compared to what primary teachers got. And my seven years working in Carysfort were very good years. I mean, I really was impressed by how primary teachers were trained or prepared for teaching, whereas I didn't quite see that ever in the second level, when the HDIP was there, it was much less well. Of course, inevitably it's only a six, seven month course, you know, compared to a very in-depth three year course for primary teachers.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

As you just heard, our conversation with Áine Hyland was so captivating that we felt it would do her a disservice to try and cut it short, so we split our episode into two parts. You can find part two in our episode library for season two. Don't miss it. Her wisdom, insight and her own story is fantastic Enjoy. If you have any thoughts on today's episode or suggestions for future topics, email Zita here at zrobinson@ dwec. ie. Zita is at zrobinson@ dwec. ie. Oh and, as always, don't forget to book your CPD. Go to our website. Dwec. ie, that's dwec. ie. Míle maith agaibh ar íst. Have a great week. Slán tamall Teachers Themselves is a DWEC original Produced and created by Dublin West Education Centre. Thank you.

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