Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Technology may be the mechanics of the brain, but history is the mind. It is evidence and informed thought. It is away from the garbage of the information highway. It is the antithesis of the Internet, the tabloid press, the frenzied media and the glut and garbage of the saturated information highway. It is the counteraction against the torpor of ideas and immediacy. It involves evaluation, real resource, reasoning, primary sources, arduous debate, politics and democracy and lack of it. Unlike the Internet garbage information glut, it teaches that there are no easy answers. Dr. Crowe asked whether we really want to live in a country where children over the age of 12 know nothing of their history, and only know about de Valera and Michael Collins through a film. If we are arguing that history is not a core subject, then there is no educational argument. If we are arguing from the perspective of competition only, we are saying that no core knowledge is more significant than another, which is not true. This brings us back to why we do not teach The Beano.

I would like to beg the indulgence of the Chair while I make a final general point about the need to hold history in its rightful place. We are supposed to be making young people more intelligent and smarter. The big question for every educationalist is how the technologies which are defining us in an inhuman way - we are lonelier and more isolated - can be counteracted progressively. Technology may teach us how things work but history teaches us how to live. Technological progress does not mean human progress. We are not raising enough educational questions about this. Are we now to surrender our history to a culture of technology? The media has altered our social responsibility, our psychic habits and our political processes. We depend on schools and on subjects like history to counteract incoherent meaninglessness. We need history for perspective and to prepare young people for what is ahead and show them what has been. The world's history is the world's judgment; without history, young people will have no judgment. I ask the Department for Education and Skills and the Minister to come to an understanding. We know they came to an understanding about the externality of examinations. They have come to an understanding that there will not be thousands of courses. The number will be capped at ten.