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The past isn't the past, it's not even over We can't discard Junior Cert History

Author John Connell agrees with President Higgins that making the study of History optional at junior cycle is to lose a part of our national identity.

WHAT IS HISTORY? That is the question we must put to ourselves. Is it the arranging
and dating of facts? The notes of the imperial victor? Or is it something much
deeper, something akin to an understanding, a means by which we might
measure our progress and failures as a people and race.

To be Irish is to be ensnared by history for ours is one of the longest; we hold the oldest vernacular writing form in western Europe, but also too the tales of our Gaelic past in the Annals of the Four masters and later still the relationship with our neighbour Britain.

My history makes me the man I am

To be Irish is to be a prisoner of history, or rather, to be Irish is to be eternally aware of history and its power. I am the grandson of a War of independence fighter and he the son of a Famine survivor. That is my history; without it I should not be here, nor be the man I am. The past informs the present.

This week, the President raised the issue of a new national question, a question of forgetting, for our schools are no longer to include history as a core subject in the Junior Cert cycle.

The move is not a new one and has been discussed for the last few years as part of a new national plan titled, Towards a framework for the Junior Cycle.

Now, however, it seems the measure is complete and we are to wipe the insight of thousands of years of our story from the minds of our young when the subject will be removed from next September on.

President Higgins rightly said that history is “intrinsic to our shared citizenship, to be without such knowledge is to be permanently burdened with a lack of perspective, empathy and wisdom”.

The place I thought lacking in cultural depth was rich with it

It was not too long ago that I was young and rather than have disdain for this subject, rejoiced in it for I learned about our background; that the place I had thought lacking in cultural depth was, in fact, rich with it.

That the language I spoke and thought in was a circumstance of history and that it was history that had kept my family in this country and the house over my head. For you see we are all the children of the past.

Our President raised the issue of the great forgetting at the launch of a new edition of the Cambridge History of Ireland, speaking at the event he added: “To be without historical training, the careful and necessary capability to filter and critically interpret a variety of sources, is to leave citizens desperately ill-equipped to confront a world in which information is increasingly disseminated without historical perspective or even regard for the truth, and I refer now not only to social media but to the news industry more generally.”

To understand where we are going we must understand where we are coming from. That much makes sense to me but it must not have made sense to the civil servant think tank and Government Ministers Ruairi Quinn who OK’d the move.

Creating a cultural amnesia

Ireland is only the third country in the world to remove history from its core subject curriculum after the UK and Albania.

Deirdre MacMathuna, President of the History Teachers Association of Ireland has said the move denies students to the right of their own history and will help create a cultural amnesia she also highlighted that the subject is already not being thought in some schools in the country.

Currently history is not compulsory in the UK to the age of 16 and available only as an elective. Just 40% of students elect to take the subject leaving a large majority unaware of their past. These figures drop even more alarmingly as students progress through to the senior cycle. CEO of the UK’s Historical Association Rebecca Sullivan has called for the teaching of history and geography to be compulsory to the age of 16 in the UK. And indeed since its removal educators in the UK have tried to backtrack on the ruling.

Are we the nation who has never forgotten our past, (not because of hatred for the outsider but for a want to remember and protect what was left) to abandon our young and arm them with nothing as we move ever forward into the new century.

In the past, only tyrannical regimes changed or altered the history of a state. The Soviet regime most famously removed old comrades who had fallen out of favour from pictures but few have gone so far as to remove the subject altogether, to create a forced amnesia.

For that is what this removal does it begins the slow process of national amnesia and forgetting leaving only a handful of children to electively take the subject and leaving the rest in a vacuum, a half-life space where history and untruth may merge, where the internet and globalised culture will educate and where our national story, our 3,000 year culture will be forgotten.

Will we see Skellig Michael as simply the film set of Star Wars

The English poet Philip Larkin spoke of what would happen to the churches after faith had been departed, I ask what shall happen to Newgrange to the Ceide Fields without the knowledge of history to view them? Shall the beehives of Skellig Michael be viewed as simply the film set of Star Wars?

The great forgetting will be the start of the History Wars of this nation where our youth will not grow up with the knowledge that you and I take for granted because we learned it 20, 30 or 40 years ago.

Perhaps with the death of history, our Government shall finally finish Pearses’ murder machine and kill the remaining gems of Gaelicness in our people. If we can no longer know our story then we can no longer stand apart thus was the GPO, the Bogside, the Civil Rights Marches for nothing.

Banish history and you banish all the world.

John Connell is an award winning journalist, producer, farmer and the author of bestselling memoir The Cow Book.

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    Mute Yun Wyn
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    Jul 10th 2020, 1:20 PM

    Very true especially when they decide who and what to censor. Joe rogan has a podcast with Twitter exec and pushes them on the issue

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    Mute Richard Russell
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    Jul 10th 2020, 4:32 PM

    The campaign has started to shut down free speech and citizen journalism We can have free speech as long as it is nuj free speech only the voice of the selected few will be heard

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    Mute Michael Patrick Newell
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    Jul 10th 2020, 3:24 PM

    And you really think our own government haven’t used misinformation or bots for their own use esp during elections…..i agree social media needs dealing with, but when you have countries where people have little faith or trust in their own governments, its hard then to trust them in turn to do what’s right when it comes to social media

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    Mute AOL
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    Jul 10th 2020, 7:06 PM

    Never mind social media. Not a true journalist left in any country. Every article is a copy and paste job. We should be holding all media to account

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    Mute Gary Sheahan
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    Jul 10th 2020, 3:52 PM

    Well, and I know this won’t be popular – but I feel well equipped to discern (most) of what goes online and practise a healthy level of cynicism and, on that basis, I say leave them at it. Take and keep the jobs they bring and generally promote ourselves as the safe and primary destination for FDI in the EU.

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    Mute Dáibh
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    Jul 10th 2020, 2:29 PM

    Misinformation is one of the biggest scourges in the world. Especially the last five years with Trump and Brexit. It needs to be dealt with it and the government should take the lead on that for the exact reasons laid out in this article.

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    Mute Bob Rock
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    Jul 10th 2020, 3:04 PM

    @Dáibh: Couldn’t agree more. It’s not been taken seriously enough by many governments around the world in my opinion. the only ones seemingly taking it seriously are countries like Russia and China and they’re using it with devastating results.

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    Mute The quite man
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    Jul 10th 2020, 5:57 PM

    @Bob Rock: yes we should start Defunding RTE the state broadcaster is a prime example of an institution which pushes a certain narrative. I can’t remember the last time the news, prime time or any radio interviewer actually pushed any minister or official for the truth. Now that the state has bailed out the broadcaster and Denis O Brian owns a large chunk of local radio stations I think it’s imperative that citizen journalists keep asking the important questions such as asking the new minister for children his stance on lowering the age of consent for children, or should under 16,s be allowed to remove parts of their bodies without parents knowing.

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    Mute The quite man
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    Jul 10th 2020, 6:03 PM
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    Mute Tony Humphreys
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    Jul 10th 2020, 6:57 PM

    @Dáibh: I believe Brexit and Trump happened because of the media and social medias attempts to scilence views that do not followed a center left agenda. When views are scilenced and not listed too, or simply dismissed as an ist, the scilenced vote.

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    Mute The quite man
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    Jul 10th 2020, 7:14 PM

    @Tony Humphreys: it’s the tip toe of totalitarianism

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    Mute Mikhail Ramendik
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    Jul 10th 2020, 6:08 PM

    While a certain amount of regulation might be necessary, I think this article actually showcases the dangers of the idea – because it repeatedly mentions Libya and the author is Paul Tweed.

    Paul Tweed is known to dislike Libya’s pre-2011 government because of its links to the PIRA, one of the sides of the well-known civil conflict in Belfast where he is based. https://www.irishnews.com/news/2015/10/21/news/belfast-lawyer-urges-britain-to-back-ira-libya-victims-301570/

    For all I know, somehow he never seems to talk about the government behind the other, equally vicious side of that civil conflict.

    In 2011, the government of Libya was overthrown by unprovoked invasion of a coalition of Western countries. The result of this action was massive suffering in Libya, including outright slave markets on the streets.

    Thankfully, Ireland did not directly participate in that deplorable invasion.

    Libya is in the middle of a civil war now between the GNA and the LNA. Should Ireland break its neutrality now by telling social networks which side of that civil war should have a voice and which one should not?

    I would hazard a guess that Mr. Tweed supports the GNA. I might be wrong here. But in any event, judicial participation, by censorship, in Libya’s civil war is exactly what Ireland should NOT be doing.

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    Mute James Gorman
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    Jul 10th 2020, 6:30 PM

    We need to ban anon SM accounts

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    Mute David Van-Standen
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    Jul 10th 2020, 7:24 PM

    @James Gorman: in the context of individual users, that choose to not use their actual name on social media, there is zero real anonymity.

    The manipulation of public opinion or the dissemination of propaganda by private groups for profit, or government agencies to push an ideological or political agenda, is carried out not with anonymous users but non-existent ones, that are farmed on a massive scale using computer networks of virtual machines and or thousands of mobile phones on they use software to simultaneously publish, share or like whatever message the client wants spread in realtime.

    That said, the answer is not the type of blanket censorship that the author or others are suggesting, which it basically the same logic as cutting down forests to prevent the activities of arsonists.

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    Mute Tom Keenan
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    Jul 11th 2020, 8:06 PM

    The people who run the world are worried about ordinary people finding out about how things really are on the internet hence the calls for censorship. The internet must become like the mainstream media,keep people ignorant so they can be manipulated.

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