Across Donegal, generations of bright, talented children were quietly pushed to the margins, seated at the back of the classroom, rarely encouraged, often overlooked, and mostly misunderstood.
This is not a piece of judgment, but a reflection. The insights we now hold were unknown at the time. This article seeks to explain the dynamics that existed back then.
For much of the 20th century, intelligence was viewed through a narrow lens, and teaching methods relied more on discipline than on emotional awareness. Long before the world recognised emotional and multiple intelligences, many children were mistakenly seen as incapable. This is a Donegal story, but its echoes can be heard in every county in Ireland, and far beyond.
Lost Opportunities
Donegal has proudly produced some of the world’s most iconic talents, Packie Bonner, Shay Given, Enya, Moya Brennan, Seamus Coleman, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Brendan De Gallaí, Daniel O’Donnell, and many more. Yet one cannot help but wonder how many others, equally gifted in different ways, never realised their true potential.
This article reflects on the educational system that existed in Ireland from the 1920s through to the late 1990s, when corporal punishment was finally abolished, and considers the opportunities that may have been missed due to a limited understanding of how children learn.
Early Approach to Education
My father, a highly intelligent and insightful man, attended primary school in the mid-1930s. He was assessed, albeit crudely, based solely on perceived IQ. Like his brothers Barney and Paddy, he did not meet the applied threshold. Forty years later, I underwent the same narrow evaluation with similar results. We were both seated in the back row, largely unnoticed, apart from the occasional beating.
This was simply the educational model of the time. It is important to stress that this was not the fault of individual teachers or schools, but a result of the global lack of understanding about learning.
The Rise of Multiple Intelligences
Until the 1980s, a single, fixed model of intelligence, what we now call IQ, dominated global thinking. That changed in 1983, when Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner introduced the theory of Multiple Intelligences, explaining that intelligence could take many forms.
In 1990, psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer introduced the concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI), later popularised by Daniel Goleman in 1995. Goleman argued that a person’s ability to understand, manage, and relate to emotions, both their own and others’, was far more important than IQ.
These discoveries came too late for earlier generations, many of whom were simply misunderstood, not untalented. One of my cousins, a naturally gifted and personable man, went through school labelled a slow learner. Years later, he revealed he had been diagnosed with dyslexia. At the time, dyslexia was still seen as slowness, or stupidity.
The Cane and the Three R’s
For much of the last century, corporal punishment was a widely accepted part of education. Learning was often reduced to the “three R’s”: Reading, Riting, and Rithmetic, and discipline was maintained through the cane.
We now understand that fear inhibits learning. Even children with strong academic ability can struggle in environments where anxiety and punishment dominate. At the time, however, such insights had yet to reach Donegal classrooms.
Missed Geniuses
Genius is often associated with minds like Einstein or Edison, but brilliance comes in many forms, emotional, creative, interpersonal. The world has celebrated people like Clannad, George Best, and Alex Higgins, individuals whose gifts extended far beyond exam results.
In my townland in Donegal, three footballers, Tony McGarvey, Phil McGarvey, and Brinie Coyle, were widely regarded as exceptional talents. Their ability was often spoken of in Teach Jack, always with warm admiration and quiet regret that their gifts remained largely unrecognised beyond the townland.
Eddie Shéamuis was one of the finest natural impersonators I ever encountered. Listening to radio comedy like Funny Friday or Callan’s Kicks, I often thought Eddie’s ability outshone the professionals. In the 1980s, he had locals in stitches in Teach Jack with his pitch-perfect mimicry.
In April 2025, I attended the wake of my lifelong friend, the late “Blues King” John Chundy O’Brien of Glassagh. Looking into his coffin, I whispered to his niece Clare that he had been a genius. She instantly retorted, “A wasted genius.” Hours later, An t’Athair Seán Ó Gallchóir spoke of John’s vast talents, as an artist, musician, poet, chess player, and generous neighbour. He lived an extraordinarily talented life, though largely unrecognised outside the townland of An Ghlasaigh.
But this wasn’t limited to the classroom. Outside the school walls, Donegal’s hidden talent lived and died in silence.
A Universal Pattern
Unnoticed potential is not rare. In a now-famous experiment, world-renowned violinist Joshua Bell once played anonymously in a busy Washington D.C. metro station. Thousands passed him by, unaware of the brilliance standing just feet away.
My father, after returning from emigration, built two successful businesses and raised ten children. But in 1945, while still in primary school, my grandfather arrived at the school to inform the teacher that he was sending him to work on a farm in Scotland.
The teacher agreed, stating, “Indeed, Mickey, you’re doing the right thing, because he is no use here.” This was a reflection of the thinking at the time. However inaccurate the statement was, my father believed what he heard, and carried that belief quietly for the rest of his life. I know this because he shared it with me many times as we cut turf together on the bog in Co. Donegal during the 70s and 80s.
The same crude form of assessment was used on my aunt and uncle. They passed the test and were deemed clever, sent to another school where a higher standard of teaching was believed to exist. In truth, the only difference between the teacher in Bun-an-Inbhir and the one in Meenaclady was the size of the cane. Both developed emotional health difficulties, no fault of their own, but shaped by a system that didn’t yet understand the human mind.
Closing Thought
This article is written with empathy and understanding, and in no way condemnatory. The teachers, families, and institutions of the past did their best with the knowledge available to them. As Christ said: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
The goal is not to dwell on what was lost, but to better understand it, so that future generations in Donegal, and across Ireland, are never again left behind because we failed to recognise all the ways a child can be intelligent.
While emotional and social intelligence have thankfully found their place within modern education, these concepts remain foreign in large parts of the corporate world, particularly in the construction industry.
Finally, we sat quietly at the back of the classroom. Some are still there, not in schools, but in workplaces, in boardrooms, on construction sites, their intelligence unrecognised, their voices still unheard.
Eamonn Coyle is a Chartered Engineer and Chartered Environmentalist, originally from the Gaoth Dobhair Gaeltacht
