We must make sure the lessons of history can still be learned by all
THE Department of Education’s decision to no longer have history as a mandatory subject in the Junior Cert raises concerns that many students may not then study it in the Leaving Cert and, as citizens, have big gaps in their knowledge of our country’s past and its affect today – politically, socially and culturally.
Teachers give an understanding of Irish and world history, but better understanding tends to come later in life through books, while Irish newspapers often run history articles like a recent one on how Watergate led to the resignation of US president Richard Nixon in 1974.
Knowing of the 1913 Lockout strike which caused severe hardship in Dublin may help to see how it partially led to the 1916 Rising and, in turn, to the War of Independence.
There are the causes and effects of events – the 1912 Titanic tragedy led to better safety at sea.
History books do sell and many are now are in ebook format – ‘Ireland’s Pirate Trail’ by Des Ekin (O’Brien Press, Dublin, 2018); ‘Martin McGuinness: The Man I Knew’, interviews with those who knew or worked with him, gives a good understanding of Northern Ireland before and during the peace process (Mercier Press, Cork, 2018); ‘RMS Lusitania: It Wasn’t & It Didn’t’ by Cobh historian Michael Martin (The History Press, 2015), a well-researched 160-page book on how the torpedo attack on the Lusitania in 1915 did not immediately bring the USA into World War I. The US entered the war in 1917.
The US National Coalition for History has urged the US Congress to look into the management of records on the separation of children from illegal immigrant parents at the US’s southern border earlier this year, when 12,000 children were sent to detention centres.
The practice ended when former first ladies, their husbands and current First Lady Melania Trump spoke out against her husband President Trump’s policy. Returning children to their parents was chaotic due to poor record-keeping and some centres being thousands of kilometres away. The NCH says the children may want the records later in life.
The past, which is history, helps us to understand the present and to build a better future. Mary Sullivan College Road, Co Cork