Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

These were guys who might not have been going to their regular lectures but they were showing up at ones that were not on their course.

We need to examine the drop off in numbers between junior and leaving certificate. The perception remains that it is too difficult to get points. If there is to be further debate on this issue we should get the perspectives of younger people, those who are sitting the exams or are in the system and find out why there is not a bigger take-up or an enthusiasm to go with history where it is being provided. To what extent was that done in the preparation of this document?

Ms Crowe's reference to the teaching of history under Tito in the former Yugoslavia and the disaster in the post-Tito period was very interesting. We probably do not need to go that far to see an example of the same pattern. There are many in this country whose knowledge of the period between 1913 and 1923 was the romanticised version they heard in primary school. They had no further education on that period. Perhaps events would have been different on this island if more people had learned the skills of analysis and had a more comprehensive history of our own affairs. In formulating policy and the discussion here about the future junior certificate course, maybe we have to learn from our own history too. We need to have further debate on this.

The concerns of the history teachers need to be taken very seriously because we have seen time and again that where history is not learned, remembered or is systematically changed there can be disastrous consequences, for example, what is happening now in the UK. There are so many other examples. When we were building high rise buildings, high density accommodation here in the 1960s the UK had stopped doing that because it saw that was the wrong way to go. When railway preservation societies were relaying tracks in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s we were ripping them up here. This is an area in which it is far too serious to make a similar mistake. I would call for a rethink of this, further analysis and discussion. If there has not been widespread consultation with the students who are using the system that should happen too. Let us learn from them. Let us find out why there is a fall off and lack of interest and try to address that too.