How have we used 1916’s great gifts? - Commemorating 1916 Rising

IT’S a truism that the victors write history to serve their own ends. Occasionally, the mask slips, as it did when an elderly Winston Churchill wondered if the bombing of Dresden might have been a war crime, or when former Pentagon hawk, Robert McNamara, expressed soul-wrenching regret over American belligerence in Vietnam.

However, controlling the teaching around great events is part of consolidating their momentum, it is part of a continuing war for hearts and minds. In the longer run, it is probably more important — for the victors, at least — to frame an event positively than it is to frame it accurately.

The teaching of history in our schools, for the first half century of this Republic’s existence, was as much about propaganda and self-justification as it was about truth. Children, often little more than gurgling toddlers, were force-fed blood-and-glory ballads as if they were hymns to a higher, more elevated state of Irishness. That many of these songs make us cringe today is an indication that we live in a far more questioning and, hopefully, rounded, time. The legacy of that uncomplicated teaching of a very complex period will be active this year, as we mark the centenary of the 1916 Rising.