As a person who lives in the UK, I was flabbergasted by how many people couldn’t tell the difference between the ROI and NI. It turned out it’s not taught in schools.
I mean, I’m living here many a year now and picked it up that way. It isn’t exclusive to Ireland, if you asked me about French history I wouldn’t have a clue either.
I think the Irish are going through a major image change.
I mean, the old image of leprechauns, shamrock, Guinness… horses running through council estates… toothless simpletons… people with eyebrows on their cheeks… badly tarmacked drives, in this country… uh, men in platform shoes being arrested for bombings… lots of rocks, and, uh, Beamish.
Most senior politicians and media people in London do not pay attention to anything outside the M25. They don’t know anything about Wales, Scotland, Yorkshire or Ulster, never mind the republic.
Why ?
Well the history we are taught in schools does not include much if anything regarding Ireland, heck we don’t get taught very much about our own country.
I went out with a lass who was born in Ireland but living over here. I think she was generally quite taken aback when I told her this. I was born mid 70’s and told her that all I was aware of was bombs, that you couldn’t hear the real voice of Gerry Adams, for reasons and that the English were not liked by the Irish.
Fortunately when I was about 16 I read True Faith by Garth Ennis which helped to expand my understanding of things.
Whilst I enjoyed history when I was at school, it is woefully lacking.
Was in school from 2003-2008 at a local comprehensive in Birmingham. They taught us about the home rule issue and the Irish war of independance and then the troubles.
The entirity of history was just the dark stuff UK had done, how WW1 was a waste of life caused by feudalism, the holocaust where we watched Schindler’s list and Slavery where we watched Missisipi Burning, then the Rwandan genocide.
It wasn’t exactly Rule Britannia education, atleast back then.
What I will say is most of the class did not pay attention to anything in History lessons and will probably throw a blank when asked, I just had a genuine interest in it.
It was taught a little bit in secondary school for me. I don’t see why Ireland should be studied more than any other country we pillaged, though.
The trouble with British history is that there’s so much of it. Some amazing, some shameful.
Many native Irish and recent immigrants to Ireland are also very ignorant of Irish history.
I’ll tell you what I remember learning about history in school (I’m a history graduate):
Medieval England, Nazi Germany, the Russian Revolution, Nazi Germany, the Norman conquest. This was 20+ years ago, even then we skipped over most of our own history, especially the bad bits.
Most Irish I’ve met don’t know who’s requested the Anglo-Norman’s go to Ireland in the first place.
Well taking NI out of that for a moment, why would people know much about ROI? Apart from knowing about the troubles because that obviously effected the UK, why would we know much about either? How much do people know about Germany, Spain, France etc. You have to remember so many people today are self-obsessed and more focussed on awful reality shows like Love Island.
As others have mentioned, you have a good number of years to teach kids/teens history, but history is so large, you can’t teach everything.
Year 4-6: I can just about remember being taught about WW2 & Egypt.
Year 7-9: Learning about Rome, Stewards, Tudors, Egypt & WW2 again, slave trade in the US & UK.
Seen a lot of people always say stuff like “schools just don’t want to teach the horrors”. Like, we watched Roots in year 8 and how the UK owned slaves.
I remember working with a Hungarian once and they were shocked how I couldn’t pin Hungary on the map. Then they started to mock me when I couldn’t name the countries next to Hungary.
It’s the same as any other country. People think England is the UK. Some people in eastern Europe doesn’t even know where UK is.
Everything doesn’t have to have an agenda on it. Yeah I know the basics of why NI and ROI are different, but that’s it.
I have learnt alot, mostly about the famine and rebellion in the 20s but its not taught much i dont think.
The UK is well-known to us because they were influential global players for a very long time.
We currently watch their TV and news channels, and the UK has a significant role in our own history.
They had no other reason to be familiar with Ireland than the fact that it was a former colony and might have contributed to the famine.
Because we are taught topics to pass a test, not because they actually want to teach history
British is not a single group and sweeping every one from Britain as a single group is ignorant in it self.
British people are several groups with different histories, languages and cultures.
I will tell you that Scottish, Irish and English people know very little about Welshmen, Welsh history, politics and culture.
Also there isn’t a British national curriculum—it doesn’t exist because each country within the Union (UK) have their own self-governing powers. Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland have their own separate educational systems, laws and national institutions forged by their own national standards.
Britain has a LOT of history. I don’t think anyone knows all of it well.
Only the British did bad things in the past, every other nation behaved peacefully and didn’t have wars or encroach on others.
Most British people know jack shit about British history, why would they know any more about Irish.
Probably because there are only three years of compulsory history in secondary school? We covered Mughal/British India, the slave trade, WWII, the industrial revolution, crime and punishment, and the French revolution. There wasn’t time for anything else!
Because who gives a fuck? Far more important things to be at
Why do you assume British people know so little about Ireland?
Why do they know so little about Luxembourg or the Faroe Islands?
I think this might be more of a thing outside of cities like London and Liverpool that have large communities of Irish people and of Irish descent.
As others have said, the history of British colonialism is not taught in schools- it is only recently that the UK has acknowledged the contribution of the Carribean and West Indian community in reaction to the hideous policies to try and deport Windrush generation children, and I hope this will be expanded to include the contributions of the Irish immigrants, who were subject to the same prejudice, racism, and bigotry.
“I feel sorry for you/I don’t think about you at all” meme
I’m from a state school and we covered Irish history including our role? They do mostly teach British history on account of us being British as I’m sure the French teach their students about France etc, but we also learnt about other countries.
If you ask the average person an easy question from a maths or science gcse they couldn’t answer it either- not saying the syllabus doesn’t need to be updated but it is an issue that goes deeper.
These topics always bring out people who say that UK schools only teach good things about the UK and cover up the bad stuff followed by replies from people who actually went to school in the UK correcting them
To me Ireland isn’t at all “special” or “unique” as a country – it’s simply a nearby country. I appreciate we have a shared language but I just don’t see Ireland any different to Belgium or the Netherlands as a smaller, friendly nation where we have shared history. Similarly I don’t see the Irish as any “closer” to us either.
As for studying it, honestly I just find/found it less interesting than WW2, WW1 etc. I’ve watched the odd fact based film based on the Troubles and have delved down some Wikipedia rabbit holes but that’s the extent of it.
There’s a lot of history to teach and only so much time. This has the same energy as those ‘what do Brits learn about the American Revolution’ questions we get regularly.
The sad fact is that what was huge to you is only a small part of our history.
I am Irish and live in the UK. The simple answer to this is Ireland is a non-entity to the UK. In Ireland you are indoctrinated in school about the 800 year struggle against the British oppressor and go home to watch the premier League and coronation Street. Its a wild mix.
The UK on the other hand the struggle is unheard of and fair city (Ireland’s coronation Street) is unheard of.
Its a complete lack of british media attention on Ireland. I took an irish literature module at uni and was absolutely gobsmacked by how much I was totally ignorant to.
A lot of people do know about it. The large number of people who don’t are the kind of people who know very little history in general and could probably name about 3 significant hisorical events or periods.
The truth is Ireland is not an important part of UK history. Why should the average British person know about it? The UK is central to Ireland’s history but it is not true the other way around. And most don’t even care about history at all.
My question is why are Irish people so desperate that British people must know and care? Most Irish people I have met in real life were not like this but online they are not just desperate for British people to know about it but also that they should feel a sense of shame about stuff that happened hundreds of years ago. It’s embarrassing and I think that it must be taught as an us v them emotive propaganda opportunity in Irish schools instead of just studying the events. Stop being desperate to feel like victims and culprits. The average British person has not done anything to you.
Like Ireland’s praise of Hitler, refusal to take in Jews during WW2 and their transformation into a tax haven or should we cover only the victim stuff?
This idea of a glorified history being taught in British schools is simply not true.
I studied AQA GCSE History and we most certainly covered Home Rule, the Easter Rising, the Troubles and GFA, Bloody Sunday, Bobby Sands…
This was all from a Liverpool supporting teacher who drew comparisons with our module on the Holocaust, painstakingly covered the nature of government propaganda, and so on.
I have to believe that commenters suggesting it was all Rule Britainnia are either old as fuck, or not from the UK.
36 comments
As a person who lives in the UK, I was flabbergasted by how many people couldn’t tell the difference between the ROI and NI. It turned out it’s not taught in schools.
I mean, I’m living here many a year now and picked it up that way. It isn’t exclusive to Ireland, if you asked me about French history I wouldn’t have a clue either.
I think the Irish are going through a major image change.
I mean, the old image of leprechauns, shamrock, Guinness… horses running through council estates… toothless simpletons… people with eyebrows on their cheeks… badly tarmacked drives, in this country… uh, men in platform shoes being arrested for bombings… lots of rocks, and, uh, Beamish.
Most senior politicians and media people in London do not pay attention to anything outside the M25. They don’t know anything about Wales, Scotland, Yorkshire or Ulster, never mind the republic.
Why ?
Well the history we are taught in schools does not include much if anything regarding Ireland, heck we don’t get taught very much about our own country.
I went out with a lass who was born in Ireland but living over here. I think she was generally quite taken aback when I told her this. I was born mid 70’s and told her that all I was aware of was bombs, that you couldn’t hear the real voice of Gerry Adams, for reasons and that the English were not liked by the Irish.
Fortunately when I was about 16 I read True Faith by Garth Ennis which helped to expand my understanding of things.
Whilst I enjoyed history when I was at school, it is woefully lacking.
Was in school from 2003-2008 at a local comprehensive in Birmingham. They taught us about the home rule issue and the Irish war of independance and then the troubles.
The entirity of history was just the dark stuff UK had done, how WW1 was a waste of life caused by feudalism, the holocaust where we watched Schindler’s list and Slavery where we watched Missisipi Burning, then the Rwandan genocide.
It wasn’t exactly Rule Britannia education, atleast back then.
What I will say is most of the class did not pay attention to anything in History lessons and will probably throw a blank when asked, I just had a genuine interest in it.
It was taught a little bit in secondary school for me. I don’t see why Ireland should be studied more than any other country we pillaged, though.
The trouble with British history is that there’s so much of it. Some amazing, some shameful.
Many native Irish and recent immigrants to Ireland are also very ignorant of Irish history.
I’ll tell you what I remember learning about history in school (I’m a history graduate):
Medieval England, Nazi Germany, the Russian Revolution, Nazi Germany, the Norman conquest. This was 20+ years ago, even then we skipped over most of our own history, especially the bad bits.
Most Irish I’ve met don’t know who’s requested the Anglo-Norman’s go to Ireland in the first place.
Well taking NI out of that for a moment, why would people know much about ROI? Apart from knowing about the troubles because that obviously effected the UK, why would we know much about either? How much do people know about Germany, Spain, France etc. You have to remember so many people today are self-obsessed and more focussed on awful reality shows like Love Island.
As others have mentioned, you have a good number of years to teach kids/teens history, but history is so large, you can’t teach everything.
Year 4-6: I can just about remember being taught about WW2 & Egypt.
Year 7-9: Learning about Rome, Stewards, Tudors, Egypt & WW2 again, slave trade in the US & UK.
Seen a lot of people always say stuff like “schools just don’t want to teach the horrors”. Like, we watched Roots in year 8 and how the UK owned slaves.
I remember working with a Hungarian once and they were shocked how I couldn’t pin Hungary on the map. Then they started to mock me when I couldn’t name the countries next to Hungary.
It’s the same as any other country. People think England is the UK. Some people in eastern Europe doesn’t even know where UK is.
Everything doesn’t have to have an agenda on it. Yeah I know the basics of why NI and ROI are different, but that’s it.
I have learnt alot, mostly about the famine and rebellion in the 20s but its not taught much i dont think.
The UK is well-known to us because they were influential global players for a very long time.
We currently watch their TV and news channels, and the UK has a significant role in our own history.
They had no other reason to be familiar with Ireland than the fact that it was a former colony and might have contributed to the famine.
Because we are taught topics to pass a test, not because they actually want to teach history
British is not a single group and sweeping every one from Britain as a single group is ignorant in it self.
British people are several groups with different histories, languages and cultures.
I will tell you that Scottish, Irish and English people know very little about Welshmen, Welsh history, politics and culture.
Also there isn’t a British national curriculum—it doesn’t exist because each country within the Union (UK) have their own self-governing powers. Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland have their own separate educational systems, laws and national institutions forged by their own national standards.
Britain has a LOT of history. I don’t think anyone knows all of it well.
Only the British did bad things in the past, every other nation behaved peacefully and didn’t have wars or encroach on others.
Most British people know jack shit about British history, why would they know any more about Irish.
Probably because there are only three years of compulsory history in secondary school? We covered Mughal/British India, the slave trade, WWII, the industrial revolution, crime and punishment, and the French revolution. There wasn’t time for anything else!
Because who gives a fuck? Far more important things to be at
Why do you assume British people know so little about Ireland?
Why do they know so little about Luxembourg or the Faroe Islands?
I think this might be more of a thing outside of cities like London and Liverpool that have large communities of Irish people and of Irish descent.
As others have said, the history of British colonialism is not taught in schools- it is only recently that the UK has acknowledged the contribution of the Carribean and West Indian community in reaction to the hideous policies to try and deport Windrush generation children, and I hope this will be expanded to include the contributions of the Irish immigrants, who were subject to the same prejudice, racism, and bigotry.
“I feel sorry for you/I don’t think about you at all” meme
I’m from a state school and we covered Irish history including our role? They do mostly teach British history on account of us being British as I’m sure the French teach their students about France etc, but we also learnt about other countries.
If you ask the average person an easy question from a maths or science gcse they couldn’t answer it either- not saying the syllabus doesn’t need to be updated but it is an issue that goes deeper.
These topics always bring out people who say that UK schools only teach good things about the UK and cover up the bad stuff followed by replies from people who actually went to school in the UK correcting them
To me Ireland isn’t at all “special” or “unique” as a country – it’s simply a nearby country. I appreciate we have a shared language but I just don’t see Ireland any different to Belgium or the Netherlands as a smaller, friendly nation where we have shared history. Similarly I don’t see the Irish as any “closer” to us either.
As for studying it, honestly I just find/found it less interesting than WW2, WW1 etc. I’ve watched the odd fact based film based on the Troubles and have delved down some Wikipedia rabbit holes but that’s the extent of it.
There’s a lot of history to teach and only so much time. This has the same energy as those ‘what do Brits learn about the American Revolution’ questions we get regularly.
The sad fact is that what was huge to you is only a small part of our history.
I am Irish and live in the UK. The simple answer to this is Ireland is a non-entity to the UK. In Ireland you are indoctrinated in school about the 800 year struggle against the British oppressor and go home to watch the premier League and coronation Street. Its a wild mix.
The UK on the other hand the struggle is unheard of and fair city (Ireland’s coronation Street) is unheard of.
Its a complete lack of british media attention on Ireland. I took an irish literature module at uni and was absolutely gobsmacked by how much I was totally ignorant to.
A lot of people do know about it. The large number of people who don’t are the kind of people who know very little history in general and could probably name about 3 significant hisorical events or periods.
The truth is Ireland is not an important part of UK history. Why should the average British person know about it? The UK is central to Ireland’s history but it is not true the other way around. And most don’t even care about history at all.
My question is why are Irish people so desperate that British people must know and care? Most Irish people I have met in real life were not like this but online they are not just desperate for British people to know about it but also that they should feel a sense of shame about stuff that happened hundreds of years ago. It’s embarrassing and I think that it must be taught as an us v them emotive propaganda opportunity in Irish schools instead of just studying the events. Stop being desperate to feel like victims and culprits. The average British person has not done anything to you.
Like Ireland’s praise of Hitler, refusal to take in Jews during WW2 and their transformation into a tax haven or should we cover only the victim stuff?
This idea of a glorified history being taught in British schools is simply not true.
I studied AQA GCSE History and we most certainly covered Home Rule, the Easter Rising, the Troubles and GFA, Bloody Sunday, Bobby Sands…
This was all from a Liverpool supporting teacher who drew comparisons with our module on the Holocaust, painstakingly covered the nature of government propaganda, and so on.
I have to believe that commenters suggesting it was all Rule Britainnia are either old as fuck, or not from the UK.