Vol. 398 No. 2
6 Mr. J. Bruton asked the Minister for Education if she will initiate a joint curricular initiative with the Northern Ireland Education Authority concerning the teaching of history with a view to promoting greater mutual understanding between the communities living on this island.
Co-operation between the Department of Education, Northern Ireland, and the Department of Education, Dublin, has been and is a feature of education in Ireland. Currently this co-operation is twofold.
The Anglo Irish Intergovernmental Conference Education Committee's European Studies (Ireland and Great Britain) project, jointly organised and funded by the Department of Education, Northern Ireland, the Department of Education, Ireland, and the Department of Education and Science, England, aims to contribute to the current educational development in the three jurisdictions and also in the wider dimension of the European Communities. The vehicular subjects are history and geography and the project currently involves six schools linked by electronic mail in each jurisdiction respectively. The project team, in co-operation with the authorities of the respective jurisdictions, develops modular inputs in the vehicular subjects in such a manner as to create minimal disruption in the national subject syllabus but designed to achieve the project aims. This project will be examined at the intermediate and day vocational examinations for the first time in June 1990. The project team have been requested to submit modules for consideration and insertion into the new junior certificate history syllabus for examination in 1992. The expansion of the school network and the programme of studies is currently under active discussion.
The Anglo Irish Intergovernmental Conference Education Committee also set up the history conferences project to revive, on a systematic and structured basis, the series of conferences organised on a co-operative basis in various locations in Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland from the early seventies onwards. Two such conferences now called CEDPATH — the Combined Education Departments' programme for the advancedment of the teaching of History — Conferences have taken place, one in Belfast in September 1986 and one in Dublin in September 1988. The next is planned for Oxford in September 1990. Participants — regarded as multipliers — include inspectors, key academics and senior history teachers from the three separate jurisdictions, thus ensuring widespread dissemination of the work of the conferences. The themes of the conferences are designed to sensitise participants to the latest in scholarship and teaching in the discipline of history.
Mutual understanding of various problems has been fostered by the scholarly consideration, in an appropriate ambience, of these problems and the respective perspectives on them that prevail. Reports of conference proceedings are produced and distributed in the three jurisdictions. The influence of these ongoing conferences on classroom practice and curricular reform and pedagogy is significant.
I welcome these conferences which are mostly one off events. I welcome also the project involving six schools — which is not a lot but is something. When does the Minister expect we will be teaching the same history syllabus for the leaving certificate this side of the Border as the students will be learning on the other side of the Border? Will it be in this century? Will we have to wait until the 400th rather than the 300th anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne before a similar interpretation and similar episodes is taught in schools both sides of the Border?
I know from the Deputy's questions to the Taoiseach yesterday that he naturally attaches great attention and significance to the Battle of the Boyne.
It is symbolic.
I can understand that, as the Deputy comes from that area. However I cannot say if it will be in the next century; I do not know when exactly it will be. Changes in syllabi must be made in the correct way. These come about through seminars and the dissemination of the information is gradually worked into books and examination questions, content, attitudes, etc. It is a very long process. I share the point of view that the more awareness, vigour and alertness students can have of the different aspects of history and how people's attitudes to history can change, the more important it is that there be a co-mingling of that. I have said publicly that it is equally important for us to keep in correct order events as they happened and their interpretation in modern terms.
I must call the next question. There are only five minutes remaining of the time available for priority questions and three questions are outstanding.
I have had only one supplementary.
I am sorry Deputy.
