The wave of militarism which has taken hold across the globe is a “species failure”, former president Michael D Higgins has told delegates at the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) conference in Killarney.
In a 35-minute speech that received a long standing ovation from the 900 delegates, Higgins said teachers had a key role to play in fostering a respect of different cultures among their young students.
He repeatedly referenced world events, however, including the growing emphasis in international relations on military strength and the negative impact of the large social media companies.
“I have always defined security as freedom from hunger, the right to participate rather than wanting to possess the most lethal equipment so that you are equal to others,” he said. “That is not security. That is danger.
READ MORE
“War is omnipresent. It has become normalised in so much of the discourse resulting in unnecessary death, destruction, mass displacement, hunger and starvation.”
There is, he suggested, evidence of “ever increasing militarisation in every aspect of life”, but “security defined as lethal capacity is a species failure in my view”.
Consideration of these and other issues is being undermined, he suggested, by attacks on public speech. “Dangerous group think which is responsible for the so many of the injustices in our society is facilitated unfortunately by an inattentive and unaccountable social media.”
“The greatest challenge to democracy,” he told the conference, “is now from power that is not accountable ... unregulated, as they wish it, corporations.”
“We need to move the discourse in a better direction and there is perhaps no profession that can have more influence on that than teaching.”
Education is under threat as well, he suggested, and society needs to ask itself the purpose of education for its young people.
“We have in recent decades come under ever increasing pressure to narrow our education system to one which focuses on what is immediate and utilitarian, one promising the most remuneration and which might be perceived as cloning our young people for the labour market at the cost of the development of imagination and analytical thinking.
“It is important that we do not view our schools as places to educate our children solely as a future labour force.”
Higgins spoke at length of his own experience of education, and in particular his time in primary school, where he remembered the profound impact the humanity of his teacher had had upon him.
He spoke too of his long involvement with the trade union movement.
“As I waited this morning to come and give this speech I was very anxious about what is being unleashed in our world,” he told the INTO event, “and whatever brief respite we have from the most outrageous language and suggestions ... it’s good to be with trade unionists.”
