John Charles McQuaid - Dean and President of Blackrock College 1925-39

Dean and President of Blackrock College 1925-39

While he was being trained as a religious and then as a priest, McQuaid's great ambition was to become a missionary to Africa. Noel Browne's biographer, John Horgan has written that: "For many years ...his ambition was not ecclesiastical preferment, but missionary service: at least four requests to be transferred to Africa were turned down by his superiors. He could have been one of the greatest missionary bishops of the century - all that energy, and intellect, would have gone through the continent like a whirlwind. These talents were unleashed instead on Dublin and on Ireland."

In November 1925 McQuaid was appointed to the staff at Blackrock College in Dublin where he remained until 1939. He served as Dean of Studies from 1925–1931 and President of the College from 1931–1939.

Although regarded as a strict taskmaster, Dr. McQuaid strove to improve the performance of average and poor students. Holy Ghost priest Michael O'Carroll was a student in Blackrock when McQuaid was appointed Dean of Studies. He recounts how, when McQuaid discovered that a class of sixth-year boys lacked even the rudiments of Latin late in term, he announced in his low steely voice: 'Gentlemen we shall begin with mensa'. By the end of that term, his systematic exposition of grammar and syntax enabled 17 of the 18 boys to pass the Leaving Certificate examination in Latin.

At Blackrock he soon made his name as an administrator and as a headmaster with detailed knowledge of educational developments in other countries and with wide cultural views. In 1929 he was appointed special delegate on the Department of Education's Commission of Enquiry into the teaching of English; in 1930 he was the official delegate of the Catholic Headmaster's Association at the first International Congress of Free Secondary Education held in Brussels; he was present in the same capacity at later Congresses in The Hague, Luxembourg and Fribourg. Elected chairman of the Catholic Headmasters Association in 1931, he remained in the chair until 1940, being specially co-opted to it in the autumn of 1939 on his ceasing to be President of Blackrock. In an appreciation of Dr McQuaid on the 25th anniversary of his consecration as Archbishop, Father Roland Burke Savage S.J. wrote: "Though a classical scholar by training and a life-long lover of Virgil, as a teacher Dr McQuaid found that he could best form his boys through teaching them an appreciation and a mastery of English prose. In teaching the theory of dramatic structure to his honours leaving class, he frequently drew his illustrations from a study of the composition of famous paintings."

Father Burke Savage also wrote that Blackrock had a noted rugby record and that Dr McQuaid "realized fully the value of games in strengthening both body and character; he knew that on the rugby pitch as or the cricket crease boys learned to be unselfish, to take hard knocks well, to co-operate with each other and to work as a team .... In forming the character of his boys Dr McQuaid imbued them with a virile Catholicism and a strong sense of their social responsibilities."

Blackrock College had educated many senior Irish political and business leaders. McQuaid was close to Éamon de Valera, a future Taoiseach, himself a former Blackrock College teacher. He would later influence de Valera in drafting the modern Irish constitution (Bunreacht na hEireann).