The older I get the more I wish I had a bigger interest in history in school. I don’t think it was taught well and maybe that is why. But now we hear that history is no longer to be a compulsory subject in the Junior Cert cycle. President Higgins is among the many to lament this foolish decision.

My grandmother was aged 99 when she died in 1994. I used to sit beside her at the fireplace and listen to tales about the 1916 Rising, the Black and Tans, the sinking of the Titanic and other huge events in our history which she remembered first hand.

I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but now I regret not recording those conversations with my granny, who was born in June 1895.

Will it be left to parents to teach their children their own lopsided take on history?

As the years passed, for somebody like me working at the media coalface, I began to realise how essential it is to have a sense of history, even recent history as it feeds into so much of current affairs and politics. I would often remark that as you grow older your value as a current affairs broadcaster becomes greater because being able to cite first-hand events and people from three or four decades ago, it equips you with better authority to steer a debate or discussion. Listen to Sean O’Rourke or Joe Duffy, for example, to realise the importance of such organic insight and natural appreciation of history.

But having a sense of history is also a noble trait in everyday life, a conversation opener. Because it was quite surprising to realise just how much collectively we didn’t know about the events of 1916 when it was celebrated two years ago. It seems it wasn’t well taught in school for some reason and this was reflected upon in various discussions at the time as it wasn’t a topic of conversation in Irish homes in the decades after either. So if anything, that shows us how we should be going the opposite way in elevating history upwards in level of importance in the curriculum.

Memories

My own memories of the troubles are vivid. Yet in 20 years’ time what will Leaving Cert students know of the Troubles, the subsequent peace process and it’s key protagonists? Or will it be left to parents to teach their children their own lopsided take on history? Outside of school hours, how else are students going to soak up knowledge of life-changing important events in history? Go into a library and read about it in their spare time? I think not.

There was a time when you would read an article in a newspaper to the end to get the full story. Social media has changed all that

I was in Brussels last week and there is a piece of the Berlin wall on display outside the entrance to the parliament. I stood for a moment and felt the great sense of history symbolised in that 11ft tall chunk of concrete. But what will it mean to the generations in the future who are now being told at the age of 12 that history, such as the story of the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, really isn’t that important to learn about? There is the old saying that those who don’t know their history run the risk of repeating it. How true that is. CL

Reading but not reading articles

There was a time when you would read an article in a newspaper to the end to get the full story. Social media has changed all that.

The comments which accompany many complex online stories reflect a fact that users obviously only read the headlines and maybe the opening paragraph or two before ranting. One angry post last week demanded to know what David Drumm spent the €7bn on. The mind boggles.

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Dealing with the inevitable