1916 letter: Keep military pageants out of our schools

“Suffer little children to come unto me” came to mind when I saw an Evening Echo photograph of Simon Coveney in the midst of an assembly of Carrigaline school children, the minister posing like a fairy godmother in a pantomime set. The officially designated occasion of the event: To mark the anniversary of the 1916 Rising.

Apart from the wrongness of using children in the photoshoot, there is something fundamentally wrong with the concept of the pageant. Other photos taken at the school show the general election candidate accompanied by men and a woman in military regalia.

It is not right that a minister should cosy up to the nation’s children, and at the same time be hobnobbing with representatives of countries promoting the development, manufacture, and use of weapons of mass destruction.

Why mimic British institutions, the celebrations of war and victory, of triumphalism and retribution, the glorification of killing fellow humans, the staging of ceremonies and public displays in honour of perceived righteousness?

As Ireland plods through the 21st century, are further copycat spectacles on the way, military pageants to mark the anniversary of the War of Independence (1919-21), the Civil War (1922-23), the rise of Blueshirt Fascism in the early ’30s, and other insurrections since the formation of the State?

The programme of government-organised military pageants involving children in primary schools should be disbanded.

Joe Terry,

Lower Aghada,

County Cork