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concentrate on … literacy and numeracy and so on [but] if we try to educate children
with no content we might produce a generation of children that can do everything but
who know nothing.
They clearly felt that these pressures could affect the quality of history teaching in general. They also indicated
that it could affect the viability of teaching an Irish dimension. The interviewee’s reasons for teaching
Ireland as the Modern World Study within the School History Project at Key Stage 4 were:
I think it’s the one that has got the most relevance to young people … it’s a difficult
one but the choices that are suggested to you are all complex, such as the Arab-Israeli
thing. But it [Ireland] has some resonance in Birmingham because of the bombings
and because sometimes a lot of … some of … the children have Irish antecedents.
Overall this decision appears to have been influenced by pragmatics and some awareness of
British and multicultural history. However, they said that it was not selected in order to
support anti-racism.
The third interviewee was the Head of Humanities in an 11-18 urban co-educational Roman
Catholic school serving a predominantly white population with significant links with the local
Irish community. The interviewee said that an Irish dimension had some importance at Key
Stage 3 in both their responses to questionnaire and interview. They taught aspects of Irish
history from the time of the Normans. The interviewee said Irish history was taught because it
related to the background of pupils in the school. The interviewee had been at the school for
22 years of which the previous four and a half years had been as Head of Faculty and six and
a half as Head of History. During this period the department had developed a substantial unit
of work related to the history of Ireland. Consequently, they had significant experience in
teaching an Irish dimension in the school under the leadership of the previous Head of
Humanities. During the 1980s the department had occasionally received complaints from
parents who were sensitive to their children being taught about Republicanism and the IRA