A chara, - With reference to Professor Nicholas Corry's letter (April 28th), I agree that the Minister for Education's decision to discard history as a required subject at Junior Cert level will not quench young people's interest in their past. Rather unborn generations will receive a folk history from the streets.
While recently watching several thousand people, (mostly young) proudly parading down O'Connell Street, in commemoration of the leaders of the Easter Rising, it struck me with pleasant surprise that two decades of historical revisionism, political censorship and denigration of our heroes of the past (from some influential quarters) had failed to quench our pride in where we have come from. This national spirit is deeply embedded in the Irish psyche despite the "cultural cringe" of the past 25 years and there it will remain, waiting for the weighty layers of revisionist garbage to be stripped from its surface.
I am very suspicious as to the motives behind the Minister's decision. However I feel it is one which may backfire, as it will increasingly become obvious that the past, however turbulent, cannot be repressed, if we as a nation are to live at peace with ourselves. That is surely a lesson which we ought to have learned from the scandals concerning paedophilia, Goldenbridge, etc. - Is mise,
Bothar Bhaile Cora,
Baile Munna,
BAC 11.