Sir, - The Teachers' Conferences for 1996 have come and gone, and neither the History Teachers' Association, the ASTI nor the general public are any the wiser as to what lies behind the decision of the Minister for Education to discard history as a required subject for pupils in Irish secondary schools up to Junior Certificate level. All that is certain is that the government white paper, Charting our Education Future, has silently removed a requirement that has existed since 1926, and that the Minister has not explained what lies behind this decision, other than to allude to crowding in the timetable. Neither has she indicated how she thinks Irish young people are, in the future, to be given some basic understanding of their cultural heritage, and of Ireland's position in Europe and in the world in past times.
This committee, which represents history as an academic discipline in Ireland, is striving to persuade the Minister to think again, and it hopes, even at this late stage, to prevent the threatened loss of history by raising public awareness of the issue. It does so in the interests of those pupils whose formal education will end at the secondary school level rather than out of concern for those who will have the opportunity to study history at university.
The general case for history as a school subject has been made before, and it is my concern to make reference here to two points that seem particularly relevant. The first is that the removal of the requirement to take some history at secondary school will render the educational experience of pupils in the Republic essentially different from that of their counterparts in Northern Ireland, where every school pupil is obliged to follow a course in history until age 14 within a revised curriculum which now includes a substantial element of Irish history. This latter inclusion was won after much negotiation and in the interests of mutual understanding, and it would be sad to see this worthy objective of educational planners in Northern Ireland rendered meaningless by an unthinking decision in Ms Bhreathnach's department.
A second, and more compelling, reason for keeping history as a requirement within the curriculum is that the simple expedient of dropping it as a school subject will not necessarily quench the interest of our young people in their cultural past and in Anglo Irish relations through the centuries. It is my view, and that of this committee, that such matters are best presented dispassionately in a school environment. This brings me to the same conclusion as in a previous communication: that the issue at stake is a straightforward one. It is whether the youth of future generations will learn their history in the classrooms, or on the streets. Yours, etc.,
Chairman,
Irish Committee of Historical Sciences,
Department of History,
University College,
Galway.