Teaching the Troubles: What are students learning about the 30-year conflict in school?

Brian Hubbard loves history. The 19-year-old from Newmarket, Co Cork, aced the subject in the Leaving Cert this year. He is about to start a degree in government and political science at University College Cork. Yet even he admits to being baffled by much of the Troubles.

“I don’t believe anyone of my generation can say with complete sincerity they fully understand the Troubles, the effect it had or the legacy it leaves to the people of Northern Ireland,” he says.

Just 15 out of his year group of about 100 opted to study history in senior cycle. Most of his classmates’ knowledge of the period, he says, is probably limited to episodes of Derry Girls or the odd news snippet on TV.

“If this low number of students engaging with history in school is mirrored across the country, you find yourself with a majority of young people who possess a limited knowledge on the Troubles,” he says.

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Caitlin Faye-Maniti (20), a student from Donegal, is one of them. She cheerfully admits to not knowing all that much about the period.

Recently she was having a discussion with a colleague about education in Northern Ireland and there was talk of whether students were choosing “green or orange” schools.

“I had to admit that I didn’t know what they were talking about,” she laughs. “I hadn’t heard the expression. A lot of my friends hadn’t either. I moved here [from the Philippines] when I was five years old. All I’ve ever known is peace.”

Just how much younger people know – or don’t know – about the Troubles is suddenly in the news. In the wake of controversy around large crowds singing the Wolfe Tones’ Celtic Symphony lyric “ooh, ah, up the ‘Ra” at Electric Picnic, former taoiseach Bertie Ahern said young people should “educate themselves” about the “ferocious trauma” of the Troubles.

“I think it beholds us to try... and explain to them as best we can the facts of what happened during the Troubles,” Ahern told Newstalk recently.

So what, exactly, are students being taught about the Troubles in Irish schools? Do teenagers get a proper understanding of the 30-year conflict? Or, in a crowded curriculum, can history lessons ever hope to convey the complexity, contested roots and human tragedy behind it?

Teaching in the Republic

History is a mandatory subject for the Junior Cycle (first to third year) at second level. All students are required to study the “causes, course and consequences of the Northern Ireland Troubles” and their “impact on North-South and Anglo-Irish relations”.

We have to cover everything over a 2,000-year period. You have to go at it hell for leather to get the whole course finished before the end of this year. That’s a problem

—  Dominic Haugh, history teacher at St Patrick's Comprehensive, Shannon, Co Clare

In practice, say many teachers, it’s a tiny element in a span of international history which stretches from the Roman empire to the internet.

One Junior Cycle history textbook, for example, devotes about 14 pages out of about 350 to The Troubles; a single page focuses on IRA and loyalist violence.

“We have to cover everything over a 2,000-year period,” says Dominic Haugh, a history teacher at St Patrick’s Comprehensive in Shannon, Co Clare. “You have to go at it hell for leather to get the whole course finished before the end of this year. That’s a problem. If we had more time to explore certain topics, that would be far more beneficial.”

In the Leaving Cert, history is an optional subject. About one in five students – or 13,000 out of 63,000 – chose to study it last year. Of those, teachers estimate about half opted to study the module on “politics and society in Northern Ireland, 1949-1993″.

Against the backdrop of the points race, say some, there is often little time to explore in detail the personal and social impact of how violence affected people’s everyday lives.

“I think students could benefit from more time on the Troubles,” says Granú Dwyer, a history teacher and honorary secretary of the History Teachers Association of Ireland. “But I also think that far more students actually engage with Northern Ireland history than in the past... The topic has been growing in popularity over the last 15 years.”

Gerard Hanlon, a history teacher at Newtown School in Waterford, says the level of knowledge about the era varies dramatically among pupils.

“You’re at the mercy of pupils’ backgrounds. We’ve a huge immigrant population and you can’t expect them to know about the period,” he says. “But then there are families where politics is discussed at home... It would be wrong to paint a picture of blanket ignorance, though.”

Teaching in the North

In the North, most pupils never study the Troubles in school. It is not taught until GCSE level, when History is an optional subject; according to figures from Northern Ireland’s exam board CCEA, approximately 25 per cent of students take history for GCSE. Even then, they must be at a school which chooses the Troubles out of two potential courses on the history of Northern Ireland.

Self-described history nerd Lauren Bond was among those who did study the Troubles for GCSE history. “This is something every student needs to know, because it does still shape our society,” she says.

Now an A-level student at Dalriada School in Ballymoney, Co Antrim, and a budding politician – she is the Youth MP for North Antrim – the 16-year-old runs a campaign, Teach the Troubles, aimed at making it mandatory for school pupils to learn about the North’s recent past.

It would be better if it was standardised in every school, every young person learning the same thing, and if there was a space for young people to share their views and express their opinions

—  Lauren Bond, A-level student at Dalriada School in Ballymoney, Co Antrim

“Obviously, I was born after the Good Friday Agreement, so I’ve known peace all my life, but growing up, you’re still very aware that division still exists, and sectarianism, I find especially among my age group, is rife,” she says.

She believes schools are “scared, because it is seen as a controversial issue” but argues that “the past gets passed on anyway, young people hear accounts of the Troubles from their parents and they’re not always accurate, so young people are told different, warped versions.

[ Three different versions of our shared history being taught on the island ]

“It would be better if it was standardised in every school, every young person learning the same thing, and if there was a space for young people to share their views and express their opinions.

“It [the Troubles] still does inform society today, we can’t ignore it, not teaching it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. You can’t change history, the only thing we can do at this stage is learn from it.”

James Tourish agrees. Head boy at St Columb’s College in Derry, he is also doing A-level history and studied the Troubles at GCSE.

The course, he says, is “very academic” and he advocates hearing more about different viewpoints.

Distorted view

“You don’t really gain a perspective on what the other side thinks,” he says. “You learn about events, but you don’t learn about what actually caused the events, so a nationalist may not understand why a unionist supports the union, and so I think that could definitely be taught better and explained better.”

Jim McBride, a retired history teacher at Foyle College in Derry and secretary of the History Teachers’ Association Northern Ireland, says a key problem is that young people learn history in their own community and get a very distorted view, on both sides, whereas in school “the teacher’s got a secure classroom and people feel comfortable telling you things.”

He acknowledges “a lot of the older teachers were afraid because it was still too close. I grew up during the Troubles, I went to Queen’s in 1981″ but “I thought, these things happened here. Pupils could go home and chat to their families, see where things happened.”

Though the perception is that the Troubles is mainly taught in Catholic schools and not in state-run schools, which have mostly Protestant pupils, he says this is less the case nowadays.

As to the significance of crowds at Electric Picnic which flocked to the Wolfe Tones, or controversy over the Irish women’s football team singing “Ooh, ah, up the ‘Ra” in October 2022, there are differing views among historians and teachers over whether history lessons have any role.

Many teachers in the Republic see it as harmless exuberance and feel too much is being read into it for a generation who came of age long after the Belfast Agreement of 1998. Others worry that too many younger people have bought into a simplistic “mythology” about armed struggle. Diarmaid Ferriter, professor of modern Irish history at UCD, says in some ways it’s a case of history repeating itself.

“Back in the 1930s and 40s, Thomas Derrig [a Fianna Fáil minister for education] felt that young people didn’t have enough appreciation of what the revolutionary generation had done for them,” he says.

“Young people are not necessarily minded to embrace the complexities of different periods. They’re a different generation. Older people can set themselves up as moral arbiters, which isn’t necessarily helpful. You’re talking about kids who were born long after the dark days had passed, so it doesn’t impinge on their consciousness to the same extent.”

[ Diarmaid Ferriter: It’s time to talk about the suffering of victims of the Troubles ]

‘Whiff of sulphur’

He feels the rising popularity of the Wolfe Tones may have more to do with the thrill of a collective experience for younger people, the whiff of sulphur that their parents might disapprove of and a symptom of the coarsening of Anglo-Irish relations since Brexit.

I encourage [my students] to come to their own conclusions. I give my opinion but I say, ‘don’t take my word for it; go off and check the sources and see for yourself’. That’s vital in history

—  Dominic Haugh, history teacher

“We shouldn’t pretend that history teaching is the answer to all this,” he says. Teachers, Ferriter says, can introduce young people to the need for rigorous historical evidence and an understanding of the complexity of events. “Beyond that, it’s not for us to police it,” he says.

History teacher Dominic Haugh agrees. He sees his role as fostering critical thinking skills among his students to explore nuanced and contested issues. The rest is up to them.

“I encourage them to come to their own conclusions. I give my opinion but I say, ‘don’t take my word for it; go off and check the sources and see for yourself’. That’s vital in history. If I succeed in getting students to think more critically, I regard that as a success.”

He directs students to online resources such as the Linen Hall Library, the Cain archive – maintained by the University of Ulster – as well as relatives and others to piece together what happened and why.

“I’m impressed at how open-minded they are. There is a danger of underestimating young people. They are cleverer than we them credit for. Yes, they do daft things – we did as well... These are good kids. They will be fine.”

Shari Irfan (18), president of the Irish Second Level Students’ Union, suggests that a key to better understanding the Troubles for a new generation sharing the island is to broaden teaching from just history lessons to include building bridges between communities.

“One way to do that is through CSPE [Civic, Social and Political Education]. There is a human element to this as well. I was at Shared Island youth forum recently and we were all talking about our different perspectives... you can understand the historical side of things, but you don’t always understand what it is to be in another person’s position.”

‘Elephant in the room’

Dr Alan McCurry, a former lecturer in history education at Ulster University, has spent much of his career studying education and conflict.

While he says in some respects the teaching of the Troubles “has come a long way” – it was first introduced to the curriculum in the mid-1990s – he notes a reticence among teachers to tackle a controversial subject and says a less exam-focused approach is necessary.

“This is the elephant in the room, that the exam system just dominates ... why divert yourself into the swamplands of teaching difficult history if you can teach effectively to get good grades?

“What we need is a module on life during the Troubles, more of a social history which would have a quick political framework to give it context but then would examine in greater depth the impact that violence had” – and if it were to be studied earlier, before GCSE, when history is compulsory, then all students would learn about the Troubles.

Student James Tourish says: “Education is key to preventing sectarianism and sectarian attitudes among young people, because you don’t want them being in an echo chamber where all they hear is republican rhetoric or loyalist rhetoric.”

“You want them to be challenged, and it would give them a better understanding of what these things mean.

“As with the chanting [’Ooh, ah, up the ‘Ra’], they’ve been brought up from a young age knowing these the things but not actually knowing the background behind them, and education is then vital to let them know what the background actually is.”