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seen in the eighteenth century and I thought they would enjoy a first hand perspective
on the issues as they had developed since then, to the present. Imperial at the
time was served by a fine young doctor, and his wife, was a teacher, since they were
born and raised in Ireland I thought if I brought the doctor’s truly attractive wife
into my history class, it would give my students a different perspective on the situation,
far more dynamic then our research in the library, my lectures, or the material in
their texts.
One
of the exciting things about being a teacher is that though one may have specific
outcomes for a class or lesson, the actual event can some times take on a life of
its own. At the time I was pretty upset about what had happened during the forty
minutes my cheerful eager history students had with a beautiful Irish teacher, filled
with a legacy that confounds us to this day. Now I realise that those students and
I, do not sit bewildered before their televisions trying to cope with the horrific
event of this past weekend. In that forty-five minute period the issues were real,
the confrontation was real and the underlying condition was real, not something in
a book, but a real live woman displayed for us an emotion, not historical fact, because
that is the issue.
I introduce her to the class and they were happy to have a guest, especially one
this interesting. Though we had covered the basic situation, the class had not mastered
all the details of the various convolutions that the Irish see as milestones in the
conflict. She began with some quick questions to determine what the students knew
and the cheerful smiles on my good students soon were replaced with apprehension
and then outright fear. When she discovered that their knowledge of the facts were
not as complete as she though essential, she began to berate the class in a far less
then complementary manner. Then point, by ghastly point, she told of the litany
of pain suffering and degradation visited on the people of the whole of Ireland by
the British for more then a century. For her it was not a stuffy historical note
in a text book, it was her mother’s uncle who was taken by the “Black and Tans” and
summarily executed. Sacking, raping and famine were not abstractions, they were
sad tales told by her grandmother, aunts and it was all real.
At this point there were several girls in the class weeping, and several of the boys
who would dashingly convey their bravado, had pale white faces, not from the story
being told, but the intense emotion within the teller.