William Joseph Myles Starkie (10 December 1860 – 21 July 1920) was a noted Greek scholar and translator of Aristophanes.
[1] He spent his early years at Creggane Manor in Rosscarbery near Cork with his four older brothers and younger sister, Edyth Starkie, who became a painter and was married to Arthur Rackham.
Obliged to begin again as a freshman at Trinity College Dublin, he won the first classical scholarship, the Berkeley gold medal for Greek and was later awarded the Madden Prize, which allowed him to travel in Palestine and Persia.
He was appointed Resident Commissioner of National Education for Ireland in February 1899 and showed the vigour and freedom from convention unusual in holders of official positions.
[8] He started with abolishing the 'Results' system in which the amount of a teacher's salary depended on the results of the annual oral examinations of their pupils.
When authorising the distribution of the pro-establishment Irish history text by Patrick Weston Joyce,[13] Starkie stated, "There can be little doubt that the Board were guilty of narrow pedantry in neglecting as worthless the whole previous spiritual life of the pupil and the multitude of associations, imaginations, and sentiments that formed the contents of his consciousness.
"[14] However, after the Easter Rising of 1916, he withdrew Joyce's text from the classrooms declaring the teaching of Irish history too dangerous a subject for the National schools.