PLANS to downgrade history in schools were sharply criticised at the final of the 1996 Irish Times/ Gael Linn Debating Competition in Cork on Saturday.
The guest speaker, Ms Mairin Quill TD, said she was "appalled" that history would no longer be a course subject for the Junior Certificate, if proposals in the White Paper on Education are implemented.
The study of history helped develop invaluable analytical and critical skills, more than ever necessary in the "soundbite culture" of today, she said in Irish.
Ms Quill - a former history teacher was speaking against the motion "Ta tionchar romhor ag ar gcuid staire orainn" (History has too great an influence on us).
The winners were Ms Riona Ni Fhrighil and Mr Fachtna O Drisceoil, from UCG's Cumann Eigse agus Seanchais, who spoke in favour of the motion.
Ms Ni Fhrighil built her argument around the Irish proverb "Filleann an feall ar an bhfeallaire" (Treachery returns to the traitor). Those who refused to learn from past mistakes were doomed to repeat them, she said.
The revelations of brutality at the Goldenbridge orphanage showed us that people could not bury a tragic past and forget about it forever.
Mr O Drisceoil said events in the North clearly demonstrated that history had too great an influence on us. People were unable to move forward towards a settlement because they were locked into different interpretations of the past.
But it was important to face up to fundamental historical facts to avoid becoming prisoners of history, he said.
In a blistering critique of the "revisionist counter revolution", Mr O Drisceoil accused some historians of using the IRA campaign over the last 25 years as an excuse to promote a colonial interpretation of history. According to this analysis, the conquest of Ireland was welcome because of the "civilising" influences the English brought to bear on the native Irish, he argued.
This interpretation of history had been accepted and assimilated by the colonised people, giving them an inferiority complex about their own language and culture.