TC: ‘I would urge that the Irish school system of the future should give freedom – freedom to the individual school, freedom to the individual teacher, freedom as far as may be to the individual pupil. Without freedom there can be no right growth, and education is properly the fostering of the right growth of personality” – Pádraig Pearse, The Murder Machine.
ZPD: Well, I can't fault anyone who finds inspiration in The Murder Machine. I especially like this bit: "I would, however, make the teachers, both primary and secondary, a national service, guaranteeing an adequate salary, adequate security of tenure, adequate promotion, and adequate pension: and all this means adequate endowment, and freedom from the control of parsimonious officials."
TC: Pearse’s words come to mind in the debate about the possible impact on history in second-level schools on foot of Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn’s proposals for a new Junior Cycle framework. Criticism has focused on the retention of just three “gateway” subjects – Irish, English and mathematics; all other subjects are to be offered at the discretion of the school and dependent on student subject choices.
ZPD: All other subjects are to be those mickeymouse subjects that are actually about nothing, like CSPE or SPHE, which most people used to call "being a parent to your kids"
TC: Critics consider this to be a downgrading of history and want it to be compulsory for pupils sitting the Junior Cycle. At the moment, history is compulsory for students in about half of all post-primary schools so the degree of alarm being expressed is overstated.
ZPD: They are actually concerned at the fact that most students who haven't studied history think that Game of Thrones is a documentary and that Band of Brothers is the result of a new type of technology by which a television screen allows you to see the past as it happens. Also, about half is somewhere close to 50%, which could be a C or a D. Which normally means "Must do better".
TC: The Minister’s initiatives are coming just as Ireland enters a lengthy period of commemoration. The dead as well as the living have a stake in these changes. Critics refer to the need to “understand the present, to develop the idea of the student as a citizen and to give understanding of what it is to be Irish”. However, the notion of “giving understanding” is somewhat problematic, as understanding is something that is better developed rather than given.
ZPD: I think you should also point out that the Minister’s initiatives are coming just as his political career as a socialist comes to a laughable end. I mean to say, this is the guy who threatened "younger teachers" that they would lose their jobs. A lengthy period of commemoration, my foot. We live in a perpetual state of nostalgia, mostly for a bunch of over-romanticised guerrillas and quasi-fascists. The dead as well as the living have a stake in these changes, because you know you can't say certain things about certain dead Irish people, they'll have your kneecaps. When, oh, when will CJH be on the Leaving Cert? "CJH was a dishonest demagogue and a larcenous hypocrite whose contribution to Irish history was as that of a dog with a bowel problem. Discuss."
TC: Most would agree that every child should develop an appreciation of the past, of where they fit in the chronological thread of civilisation and develop the motivation and skills necessary to enable them to explore and relate to the past, even if only to understand the present better.
ZPD: ...apart from that guy in sixth year who genuinely likes Hitler, even after he saw all the Holocaust stuff and all. I mean, people should be free to draw their conclusions about history themselves.
TC: If we accept this view, the question then becomes one of agreeing on what is the best way of doing this. The study of history is one way. But it is not the only one and might not even be the best one. Who would argue against the value to the historical imagination of the study of Yeats’ September 1913, of an introduction to Renaissance art or of an introduction to the classics?
ZPD: And of course, there is always the Discovery Channel. And games like Assassin's Creed. Who would argue against the value to the historical imagination of the study of Yeats’ September 1913, of an introduction to Renaissance art or of an introduction to the classics? Maybe someone who maybe considered Yeats to be an untrustworthy headcase. Or who thought that maybe most 15th century Europeans experienced something other than the life of privilege enjoyed by a handful of Italians.
TC: The single most important attribute a young person should have acquired at the end of the Junior Cycle is a love for learning.
ZPD: Aren't people born with this anyway?
TC: Compulsion of any sort is likely to diminish this possibility. There is a difference between what a student should do and what a student must do. It is ironic that historians should find themselves arguing for compulsion, given the experience of compulsory Irish. History teachers would be the first to acknowledge that few things beget subversion better than compulsion.
ZPD: Maybe the reason why students do so poorly in everything is due to it being compulsory. Why not make school optional while we are at it? Let's keep perspective here. There is a world of difference between the lobby for compulsory Irish (the guys who do the weather on TG4 et al) and historians. Historians engage in actual debate about real things, like rights, economics and responsibilities. Apart from the really popular ones that have all those programmes on the BBC.
TC: Indeed of any subject specialists, historians have probably least to worry about regarding the take-up of the subject in the reformulated framework. Students enter second level having taken eight years of a highly regarded history curriculum in primary school. It is surprising that opponents of the Minister’s plans make no reference to this. Furthermore, unlike many subjects, history teachers have a multitude of teaching and learning props close to hand in the landscape and daily lives of the children.
ZPD: History teachers have nothing to fear in considering Animal Husbandry as an alternative will only be taken up by Travellers. Students enter second level having taken eight years of finger painting and doing their family tree in primary school. But I see your point about the "landscape and daily lives of the children." I guess this means that the children who live in social housing in deprived unemployment blackspots will have to accept that their knowledge of the world will begin in the 1960s. What about the children in remote schools? I mean, there's bound to be a War of Independence ambush site somewhere near where they live? Someone in the family must have done something interesting? Just keep it away from politics and power structures. The eight years of primary history don't guarantee a coherent knowledge of the chronicle of human history. Knowing that chronicle is important, as fundamental a skill as knowing how to tell the time. The fact that knowing is no longer seen as relevant as it once was - because the new focus is all about "learning to learn", a mantra as trite as it is meaningless - possibly underlies the rhetoric being employed here. Knowing that there is an order in which the facts of human history are arranged is important before one can even attempt to exercise higher order thinking.
TC: The Minister’s proposals are based on the assumption that we can trust schools and our young people to enter into this realm of study voluntarily. They also assume that we can trust their teachers to find new ways of accompanying them in this learning adventure. They will be released from the straitjacket of a tightly prescribed syllabus and will be free to enter with their students into a collective project of the exploration of the past drawing on the props and artefacts that previous generations have provided for them.
ZPD: You lost me at the end there. Trust schools? Like the way we trust them to deliver equality and inclusion? A straitjacket the current syllabus may be, but these devices are useful for keeping lunatics from harming others. It will all be down to the individual teacher, I imagine. Or the history teachers in a school, who, frankly, will most likely fudge along with the old syllabus, after introducing the odd project. Minus the Plantations section, obviously, which is boring as watching dogshit go white. But I think it's good that I can finally get the Enlightenment as much attention as it deserves. No, wait, hang on. I guess it will have to be in line with the school's ethos.
TC: Finally, they are based on the conviction the teacher and student will both recognise the enriching potential of this pursuit in the celebration of one’s place in the long thread of human endeavour.
ZPD: Well, you can't argue with that kind of rhetoric, can you. Only an onion could fault that statement. Apart from the fact that it suggests a parity between professional historians and adolescents who make cultural decisions that make things like "Avatar" happen.
TC: Compulsion and celebration are uneasy bedfellows.
ZPD: Like most people who share a bed, they will probably get it on eventually, most likely won't remember how it started and will possibly leave the next morning embarrassed, ashamed and maybe even a little proud of it. Irish historians, in schools and outside of them, have worked tirelessly to extricate an honest study of the past from a political agenda in the last thirty years.
I can't see how the NCCA lost its nerve on" compulsory subjects". Compulsory also means mandatory, required, necessary, essential. All they had to do was change the assessment practice if they thought it wasn't fit for purpose. (It even says so in the current syllabus, right at the end.)
But what is most galling is the belief that the study of history is some kind of "adventure" or "pursuit"; a "celebration". Knowing the past is the solemn duty of every citizen. It is the birthright of every child, the legacy of our collective memory, not to be cast aside by feckless parents or incompetent school managers or by the children when they are minors. It is the means by which we prevent oligarchies from controlling the present.
