For some time now I’ve been thinking about what parts of our history is learned in schools and surprisingly came across the same thoughts on Radio Ulster today. Should our political history be taught in schools? Should subjects such as Bloody Sunday, Bloody Friday, the Pogroms or indeed the Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen be discussed and debated by children as part of the curriculum?
The reason I was mulling this over initially was due to the fact that while at school, in history, in a Catholic Secondary school we were taught about the Larne gun-running, about how the convent next door was once owned by Sir Hugh Smiley, after whose death the house took its place in Irish history because the famous 1914 UVF gun-running operation that took place in the North was actually plotted and expedited around the table in the dining room of Drumalis House. Edward Carson was a longstanding friend and a frequent visitor to the Smileys and it is commonly believed that the gun-running operation took place with the permission of the now-widowed Lady Smiley.
Looking back now, history lessons lacked our side and perspective of Irish history, about the 1981 hunger strikes, about why they took place, about why the peace walls were in place, about the communities on either side of those walls. There was nothing about, for instance, the Battle of the Bogside or not surprisingly the Burntollet Bridge Ambush. Clearly, at that time the North was still very much a Unionist-dominated state and so they essentially ran the education system and what that entailed in their narrative; but what about now? Our kids can’t learn from the past if they don’t learn about our past.
One contributor today on Radio Ulster indicates exactly what I mean when he said – “Who will create the narrative for the story of our past? I do not want my children being brought up thinking the RUC was a fair and honest police force. I don’t want my child to think the British were impartial and had nothing to do with the conflict here. I don’t want my child to be taught that the IRA was simply a terrorist organisation” and therein lies the problem, as it does with anything in Northern Irish society, the narrative. To recite history as it happened will see the RUC riddled with Orangemen, riddled with Loyalist paramilitaries, and rotten to the bone. It will see a Loyalist UDR as a militia handing weapons to Loyalist paramilitaries, using its uniform to ambush innocent Catholics on dark, lonely country roads. History will see Unionism and the British government attempting to suppress Irish and Catholic human rights and civil rights. Is Unionism ready for that? Can they accept the truth coming out to our children that the RUC and UDR and indeed the British army, in general, were murderers who helped assassinate two human rights lawyers? Internment, suppression of voting rights, gerrymandering…can Unionism deal with that?
Alternatively, can Nationalists and indeed Republicans deal with Bloody Friday, Kingsmill murders and more, can they deal with ‘the disappeared’? I’m of the mindset that we cannot hide from our past. To do so is to betray ourselves and deny we even exist. However, it does somewhat feel that our proud history of rebellion and fighting against British occupiers is largely forgotten in schools, not that it was ever taught other than the 1916 Easter Rising. Are the likes of John Hume, Martin McGuinness and even Ian Paisley too recent to mention? I don’t think so! after all, they navigated and negotiated the GFA and peace – something which still bears fruit today in this little state.
One thing that may be of concern, and it reared its ugly head today on Radio Ulster…can we really teach our true history in schools without breaching the official State Secrets Act, especially in the North? Something to think about.
Comments are closed.