Downgrading history in schools - Dangerous step into darkness

Next month, when Junior Certificate students return to class, history will no longer be a core subject. However, Irish will.

This establishes another dichotomy as, in so many ways, one is the expression of the other. Without one the other seems, at best, symbolic but hollow.

Speaking at the West Cork History Festival this weekend, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin echoed remarks made by President Higgins when he described junior cycle changes that made history an optional subject as a “catastrophe”.

In a darkening world where the mistakes of the past seem ever more likely to recur, that “catastrophe” warning goes far beyond the classroom.

Ignorance about our shared past almost ensures we will repeat the errors of our forefathers.

Ironically, a grasp of history limits Fianna Fáil’s prospects of power. In a cruel pincer movement, ignorance of history also works against the party’s prospects.

Sinn Féin’s campaign to recast terrorists as civil rights workers could only succeed in a society that has forgotten, or not been taught, its past. Sinn Féin’s “rehabilitation” depends on this.

This Republic is shaking off many of the shibboleths that made it such a grim place. That evolution could not have advanced without an understanding of our past.

Removing history as a core school subject is a profoundly retrograde step and must be reversed at the very first opportunity, as the ignorance its downgrading facilitates is a real threat.