The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #150911   Message #3618524
Posted By: Jim Carroll
14-Apr-14 - 05:43 AM
Thread Name: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
From your link
It is exactly new revisionism, as outlined below, that modern historians like Kinealy are seeking to set right.
This passage makes it clear that Irish education moved away from the nationalist teaching of history to a position of discussing the famine in terms of blame in the 1940s that is exactly what I said earlier and what Kinealy wrote in the book I have recently read.
She and her colleagues have now returned to the question of the cause of the consequences of the famine - she believes that it is Britain's fault and possibly deliberate; others accept it is Britain's fault, but question whether it is policy or just incompetence and malicious neglect
What is covered in your link is exactly in line with what I posted in my account of what is being taught in Irish schools and has been for the last half century
The only hatred comes from you - and that now includes a hatred for the British by blaming the British government for tolerating racism like yours
Read your own links before you post them - you ignorant pratt
Jim Carroll

Developing since the 1940s, this 'revisionist' historiography exposed various popular accounts of key historical events as nationalist myths and endorsed the view that Irish history should be seen as 'a complex and ambivalent process rather than a morality tale'.   Also the teaching of national history changed as contacts with colleagues and professionals abroad, enabled by the formation of the Irish branch of the European Association of Teachers in 1961, brought Irish history teachers in touch with new views on pedagogical objectives and historical narratives. According to Magee, these international exchanges played a key role in raising the awareness among Irish history teachers that other countries had progressed further in removing from school textbooks 'the distorted judgements and prejudices engendered by recent rivalries'. The changes in history education mirrored wider transformations in education and society. Motivated by a desire to leave the era of economic stagnation and excessive emigration decidedly behind and meet the needs of Ireland's industrialising economy, the Fianna Fail governments of the 1960s introduced sweeping educational reforms geared towards greater provision of education at all levels, more equality of opportunity, more emphasis on vocational, technical and scientific training, and the establishment of a comprehensive curriculum.
Educational reform also had a profound effect on history education and textbooks. A study group set up by the Department of Education on the teaching of history in schools issued a report which marked a turning point in Irish education. The report highlighted the need for new textbooks 'attractively produced and illustrated, and free from the chauvinism and the selective treatment that had disfigured school histories from the establishment of the Irish Free State'.   More generally, the reforms heralded a sharp increase of state and parental involvement in education at the expense of the hitherto almighty Catholic Church. The church itself changed as well, moving from a conservative bastion strictly following the orders from the Vatican to an institution primarily concerned with the spiritual and psychological well-being of its adherents. Hence, Ireland was far from immune to the social processes and movements that would so profoundly change the character of Western societies from the end of the 1960s onwards.
The new history textbooks of the late 1960s and early 1970s all echo the changes called for by the report. They differ from the older textbooks in a number of ways. The most notable difference concerns the initial response of the British government. In contrast to their predecessors, the new books state that the British government, headed by prime minister Sir Robert Peel in 1845, did take immediate action after the outbreak of the disease: 'Peel's relief measures (…) were prompt, skilful, and on the whole successful'. Yet, a new Whig government, the books argue, exchanged the interventionist course for a hands-off policy, in line with the prevailing laissez faire ideology. The state refrained from the purchase and distribution of food, leaving these activities entirely to private enterprise and charity. It would only engage in public works, which were intended to give the poor and hungry an opportunity to work for the state and earn a modest salary. This new policy, the books explain, allowed matters to grow from bad to worse so that in the end the government 'admitted defeat' by abandoning public works and extending direct relief. Thus, much more so than their precursors, the books draw attention to the political processes operating in the imperial centre and try to make it understandable why the British government, the main 'other' from an Irish perspective, pursued the policies it did.