“The English thrusting out the Gaelic”: changing attitudes to language in missionary schools in the Scottish Gàidhealtachd, 1811–1872

This article evaluates how a key missionary society negotiated the evangelistic impulse to introduce the Bible through the vernacular with huge societal pressures, across the British Empire, to promote English literacy among indigenous peoples. It assesses attitudes and pragmatic adjustments to the relationship between language, education and missionary work from the Society’s founding in 1811 to the Education (Scotland) Act of 1872 which institutionalised English medium education. It explores how exclusively teaching Gaelic reading led initially to significant success. However, this approach was contested by donors and the target population. Letters and petitions to the Edinburgh Society for the Support of Gaelic Schools, which operated in the Highlands and western islands of Scotland, reveal varied attitudes to language and education held by indigenous people. Inspection reports reveal the influence that the local population had on schools while other evidence demonstrates how schools were utilised strategically by parents. This indigenous agency forced informal adjustments in order to meet local needs and was, finally, as influential as the external Anglifying pressures and the organisation’s financial difficulties in an eventual change of policy. The article therefore examines the vernacular/religious versus the English/social uplift debate over half a century, then assesses the 1867 policy change and, lastly, the long-term legacy of the organisation on Gaelic teaching. It also contributes towards the neglected topic of education in the Highlands and islands.