Sir, - I refer to your editorial (April 24th) entitled "History's Future". This was an attempt to "balance" the controversial debate about whether to retain history as a core subject on the junior certificate. The debate was provoked by the Minister for Education's bizarre suggestions of April 12th, 1996, to remove the subject as required reading for students preparing for this exam. Firstly, I would like to say that Niamh Bhreathnach's suggestion is both insensitive and insulting. How are we to read literature, comprehend sociological or anthropological interpretations, appreciate design or language without history?
Secondly, I would suggest that the editor think very seriously about the consequences of his contribution to the debate. It seems he wants to perpetuate the divides between the theoretical and the practical, divides that need to be interrogated as pedagogical aberrations and not taken for granted as legitimate oppositions. I quote from his editorial: "What is at issue is not some revisionist plot to undermine history, but a genuine effort to put together a school curriculum which best serves the needs of all children both the academically bright and those whose talents are of a more practical nature. How, may I ask, are such distinctions made between students? Or how, may I ask, are distinctions made between the living out of one's life and the making of history in the process; irrespective of one's profession or "talents"?
As to the final point in this editorial about an already "overcrowded curriculum", as an Irish woman only now beginning to read and learn about Irish women who lived before me, "overcrowded" hardly seems an appropriate term to apply to such recent introduction into the educational system. Women have been occluded from history, as from many other disciplines and it must be with severe regret that our feminist historians contemplate voicelessness after such a brief sojourn of expression.
"A chill goes down my spine," writes Margaret Ward, "each time I remind myself that our first wave feminists at the turn of the century - despite all their books, newspapers, arrests and martyrdom - a movement that attracted thousands to the cause of female suffrage, vanishes without a trace." (The Missing Sex: Putting Women Back into Irish History, Attic Press, 1991.)
Sad to say such "chills" will persist in the face of our media and policy makers' ignorance of the value of difference, between people and places, and their ethical duty to facilitate the survival of cultural and historical knowledge. - Yours, etc.,
Brookleigh,
Maynooth,
Co Kildare.