Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, Deputy McHugh’s decision to give history special core status in the junior cycle following the review on whether history should remain an optional subject. I am aware that the NCCA had warned that making history mandatory for study at junior level could undermine recent junior cycle curriculum developments. We know that while history was not a mandatory subject in secondary school, up to now, more than 90% of pupils at junior cycle studied history.

The Minister’s decision seems a reasonable response to the strong case made by historians and history teachers that the subject should remain a core element of the curriculum up to junior certificate at least. There is clearly great pressure on secondary schools to present the most useful and modern range of subjects to each cohort of Irish children. I have supported the call in the past to strengthen the STEM subjects throughout the second level curriculum. Science, technology, engineering and maths are vital subjects to support a modern economy and it is impressive that more children are now successfully taking higher maths at leaving certificate. I was also one of those who called for coding to become part of the junior and senior curricula at second level, given the great success of informal CoderDojo projects in communities around the country. Obviously, the promotion of Gaeilge, our native language, and English and some European languages are also central to equipping young people with the deep cultural background of our nation and the written and spoken fluency necessary for modern life. It was always striking that, up to recent years, musical education, especially the study and learning of instruments, was deficient across primary and second level schools. While Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann and other organisations have tried to fill that void, it is an area we need to work on.

Despite all these pressures and caveats in regard to curriculum development, history is a uniquely valuable subject which deserves a key role in Irish education up to at least junior certificate level and beyond. It was James Joyce who wrote that history was a nightmare from which he was trying to awaken. Certainly, the history of the 20th century, with far more than 100 million people killed by wars and oppressive regimes, and the long suffering of ordinary families and people from social conditions under slavery, serfdom and brutal, unbridled capitalism, is generally very depressing. However, the long-standing development which seeks to research and document the lives of most people in the past, rather than learning the litany of emperors, popes, kings and plutocrats, and the machinations of European power politics, has been a very positive development in the education system. Every human being, family and community has a place in history and the huge interest among citizens in researching their own ancestors and how they lived in the past is testament to a great interest in the subject, and this should clearly be cultivated at primary and secondary school.

It is certainly important to study the past as everything about ourselves and society has been influenced and determined by past events. The subject of history, therefore, helps profoundly children and adults to get a sense of their own place in time and the key influences which have shaped their lives. Studying history also helps greatly to develop analytical and writing skills as children research and assemble information, led by their teachers, and then present their findings and views in essays, projects and presentations. The Minister and Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan are right that visiting historic places is also vital in the education of children.

The rigorous study of history at third and fourth levels often profoundly enhances our understanding of the past and casts light on how modern societies address key modern problems from their historical development. In my own case, studying the work of G.R. Elton on the Tudor period, and Lewis Namier and A.J.P. Taylor on the 19th and 20th centuries, under the guidance of great historians like Professor Maureen Wall and Professor Art Cosgrove, certainly gave me a powerful insight into the past. Historians have helped us to understand the past since ancient times, such as Herodotus, Tacitus and Livy, all the way down to Edward Gibbon and David Hume in modern Britain. Our own pre-colonial and medieval history was documented in the Annala Uladh, the great annals of our nation, and in the later works of Mícheál Ó Cléirigh and the Four Masters. Studying such works gives us a great insight into how we became what we are today.

I welcome the Minister's decision and commend him on it.

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