The Christian Brother Community and MIE
The Christian Brothers have been associated with Marino since August 1883 when the congregation relocated from Belvedere House, now St. Patrick’s College Drumcondra, to Marino House, once the home of Lord Charlemont. As the number of Brothers grew, the accommodation in Marino House became inadequate. It was decided to build a new Generalate and Novitiate on the Marino estate. The foundation stone of St. Mary’s Marino was laid in 1900, with the new teacher training college opening in 1905.
In 1929 the Department of Education recognised St. Mary’s College Marino as a teacher training college. Prior to this, the standards of St. Mary’s College were regulated internally by a Board of Examiners appointed by the Superior General. The teacher training course, under the Department of Education, was extended from one to two years, with the National Teachers’ Diploma being awarded to successful students.
A distinctive feature of the programme in Marino was that the student teachers, who were all Christian Brothers, spent three or four years in active teacher internship as Junior Assistants, teaching in schools, between the first and second years of their training. In the period 1931-1958, 572 Christian Brothers sat the final examination of the National Teachers’ Diploma with seventy per cent of the candidates obtaining first class honours.
There were two significant developments in St. Mary’s College in the 1970s: the first lay students were admitted in 1972, and in 1976 St. Mary’s College began an educational association with the University of Dublin, Trinity College (TCD). A new three-year initial teacher education degree course - Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) - was developed and involved students studying at both TCD and Marino. The direct involvement of the Christian Brothers in initial teacher education ended in 2000 with the retirement of Br. Nolan as Head of College.
The centrality of a strong commitment to education in the work of the Christian Brothers is reflective of the mission of the founder of the Brothers, Edmund Rice, whose central philosophical tenet was that education is a prerequisite to the attainment of full human dignity.
The community house, St. Joseph’s, is an integral part of the infrastructure at Marino Institute of Education and the Christian Brothers who live at Marino continue to support and manage many activities within the Institute.