Critical Review

Critical Review of Essays

Critical Review of Essays

Essay 1

Preventing the Future. Why was Ireland so poor for so long?

In recent years, Ireland has shown a high content for the social professionals, specifying the situations of late modernity, challenging obtained ideas and asking new questions. Tom Gravin's work is limited to the traditions of Irish political history, a work that explicates only Ireland itself, but it is also located in the comparative framework of social science. It debates that Ireland was dissimilar from other European countries but without locating in the easy description of 'exceptionalism'. Its major query is related to the literature of Celtic Tiger and which is further elaborated by O'Hagan and Newman book. The work of Tom Gravin mainly explained the social and political system downfall and how it is unblocked, which allowed for change and progress (Gravin, 2004, p. 1-5).

Initially the beginning point or problem was the nationalist revolution of 1916-22. However, this event was not embarked as social revolution. Gravin depicted that it basically reinforced the previous structure of British rule while the late 19th century, a traditional owning of land peasantry and also the traditional Church. This was not considered as Gellnerian nationalism, leaded by the fuzzy modernizers or ruled by the requirement of industrialization, but it considered as opposite. Successive pro-Treaty failed to fulfil the objective and in the 1930s Ireland pursued the world into Protectionism. This lead to anti-modernization groups and sectors, which enforced and motivated the hazardous politics of division rather than growth and progress. Protectionism might assist Ireland in surviving the Second World War, but it bounded it afterwards. The Government of Ireland did not invest and planned in infrastructure and also the private sector muffled (Gravin, 2004, p. 1-5).

In the works, the second problem also recognized. The problem was the educational system. Church mainly controlled the schools and even universities of Ireland. No expansion of technical and vocational training done, and the education system doomed. The methods of teaching were traditionalist and non-appropriate, and resources put into restore the Irish language. Tom Gravin illustrated in his work that only few of the people finished the secondary education and the entire educational system sustained by the political establishment that linked to the never changing rural view of society and economy (Moran, 2009, pp.nd.). In this second problem, the concept of modernization was a deficiency and the author elaborates that traditional system should have been interchanged in the education system so that the education system should be appropriately managed and the majority of people obtain the education.

The third problem was the enriched role of the church related to social and political activities. Tom Gravin in his work notes that The Republic of Ireland was strange for many years in integrating the functioning of liberal democracy with the most, and if not such thing created the downfall, but the religious hierarchy dominated the system and various areas of public policy. Further in around 1962, 90 percent, Church was the driving factor of the good ...