Education
As with many members of the Irish landed families, who had remained constant to the Roman Catholic faith, Nano Nagle was sent to France to be educated. Education was being denied to them in Ireland unless they agreed to convert to the Church of Ireland. Nano's life in Paris, where the Nagles had many important social connections, was without a great deal of heed to the plight of the less well off of her country people.
On her return from France she lived in Dublin for a while with her mother, but the deaths, in quick succession, of her father, mother and her sister Anne, caused her to return to her home at Ballygriffin (17??). Here she came to see with painful clarity, how thoroughly the penal laws had done their work, particularly in the material and spiritual degradation of the poor. Exposure to these political realities was significant in her decision to enter an Ursulines Convent in France. There she was gradually persuaded that her life would more usefully be employed among her own people and in her own country where under the Penal Laws access to education was still banned for Catholics.
Read more about this topic: Nano Nagle
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day’s demonstration. Let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“Do we honestly believe that hopeless kids growing up under the harsh new rules will turn out to be chaste, studious, responsible adults? On the contrary, by limiting welfare, job training, education and nutritious food, won’t we plant the seeds for another bumper crop of out-of-wedlock moms, deadbeat dads and worse?”
—Richard B. Stolley (20th century)
“As for the graces of expression, a great thought is never found in a mean dress; but ... the nine Muses and the three Graces will have conspired to clothe it in fit phrase. Its education has always been liberal, and its implied wit can endow a college.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)