Do americans learn about the troubles?

34 comments

1. I am not sure about now since enough time has passed that it is “history”, but when I was going to school, it would have been essentially a current event, and there isn’t much curriculum designed to cover that. We may have briefly touched on some of the earlier stuff, but recent world history was limited to events that had a direct impact on the US. We would have learned more from watching the news or listening to the Cranberries. IIRC, our curriculum cut off right around the Bosnian War and the Troubles ended a few years after that. This was high school in the mid 2000s.

2. In my experience most Americans do not know about the troubles. the majority of us that do are either catholic with or without Irish ancestry, history buffs, REM or U2 fans, fervently anti-british or a mix of those. The troubles weren’t covered very well in the US due to the Alliance with the UK and the huge number of Irish decedents here which could have caused domestic problems here (not violence but political shit) Also when the Provos were listed as a terrorist group they could no longer fundraise or promote in the US cutting the on the street knowledge of the civil war.

3. It was briefly touched on in class when I was in high school (early 90s), but not in detail. I have seen Derry Girls and I had an acquaintance who spent a semester of college in Northern Ireland, so most of what I know about it came from those accounts.

4. Generally no. It’s just not considered a significant part of US or world history. Americans are much more likely to know about the poor treatment of Irish immigrants and refugees in America during the 19th century rather than the Troubles. If more people were aware, “Irish Car Bomb” probably wouldn’t be the most common name for a popular bomb shot; most people just aren’t aware of the issues with that name.

5. No.

6. We touched on it a bit in high school. I think most Americans are familiar with the basics, Catholics vs Protestants, the IRA, hard crackdowns, will NI be part of Ireland or the UK, etc, but most Americans’ knowledge is fairly shallow. Probably cant name any dates or names of individuals, or even the specifics of what the violence was other than just terrorism.

   People know there were car bombings and shootouts on the streets, and that it was Catholics/Republicans vs Protestants/loyalists, but the knowledge ends there.

   People who were adults in the 90s and before also probably remember what they learned from the news.

7. I remember it was mentioned in school, but it didn’t go very far in depth.

8. I learned about it from the news at the time.

   Books about the Troubles like Say Nothing are frequently recommended. The film Michael Collins was popular. Derry Girls is popular.

   I don’t know how it is handled in school these days. When I was in highschool, we had one year to cover world history starting with the Sumerians and one year of US history.

9. It was current events when I was in school. I can’t imagine it getting more than a cursory mention of world events during studies of that time period, it didn’t have a major impact on the US or global politics.

10. I don’t recall the Troubles being covered as part of my high school curriculum at all (I graduated in 1995). The conflict was still very much considered current events at that point but I don’t recall much news coverage. The internet was still in its infancy!

    I’ve done some of my own reading on the subject since.

    The Cranberries probably did more to catch the attention of younger Americans than anything else, tbh, and that song is still very important to a lot of people growing up around that time.

    How old are you, OP? Have those events affected your life or that of your family at all? Feel free to disregard if you’d rather not answer.

11. We briefly covered the 1922-23 civil war in my sophomore year high school English class because we read a short story about the war. But that’s about it

12. I did. I also know that nobody in Ireland wants to hear my thoughts on them, as a New Englander.

13. I think it might’ve been mentioned but I anything I’ve retained about it was learned after school. I wouldn’t be surprised if a significant number of people don’t remember learning about it and barely know anything about it at all.

14. Other than my wife, who’s father is English, not being allowed to wear green on St Patrick’s day growing up, I don’t think many people really know much about it.

15. They mentioned it in my high school but barely. I really mean like twenty minutes. Most people probably forgot. In a word: no.

16. I did not in school. But I have learned a small bit on my own.

17. Some. I had a pen pal in west London in the early 90s, and she would sometimes write that she had trouble getting to school because the IRA had called in a bomb threat at Heathrow Airport. Naturally, that piqued my curiosity. More recently, “Derry Girls” did an excellent job of bringing that historic period to the masses.

18. Basically no. I wouldn’t assume most Americans have heard of the Troubles unless they are particularly well-educated, hardcore history buffs, or have a personal investment in all matters Irish (usually via Irish heritage). At most there might be a vague association in the minds of people of a certain age that Belfast is or was a dangerous city.

    For that matter I don’t think most Americans know much about the root causes of the Troubles, why Ireland is split, that Ireland was colonized, etc.

19. Not really, unfortunately. I’ve been to Northern Ireland and first learned about the Troubles there and about a year ago just randomly read the entire Wikipedia page about it. I think most Americans would be interested in it though, considering it was guerilla warfare in the U.K over the span of a few decades.

20. I don’t know about learning about it in school, but it was on the news all the time, until they finally stopped bombing each other.

21. Nope, class of ‘15 in California

22. Didn’t learn much because they were happening while I was in school. Enjoying watching Derry Girls.

23. They were going on when I was in school so we learned about them during current events lessons

24. I think there’s a general knowledge about it. U2, references to the IRA, depictions in media like Derry Girls. Hunger. There’s pop culture references to it around. There was probably a blurb about it in the “current events” section of yearbooks from the late 90s, along with other international issues from that time.

    I don’t have any in depth knowledge of it.

    I’m not going to speak for all 300 million people, but I’m aware of it so I’m sure many are too.

25. The extent of my formal education on The Troubles came from The Cranberries.

26. I grew up to a father who grew up in the 1940s and he had 16 brothers and sisters.

    In the 80s a friend of his used to get an IRA magazine, and rumor has it he was sending money over there. He had a list of English things to boycott. I was always a little pissed as the list had matchbox cars on it. We also went to Ireland in the 80s, and I loved it. We rode around with stickers saying England out of Ireland.

    But, in the 1980s we only had like 4 channels. One was PBS, and it had a lot of BBC stuff on it. I grew up watching Dr. Who, the Prisoner and high brow British Mysteries. I never grew to hate the English, we had the cold war going on. And that was a much more immediate concern to me.

    The idea of actually hating a British person, for whatever reason, just was insane to me. Still is.

    Sorry.

27. Not really, and it wasn’t called that or given a name, but we were briefly told about Irish history and it’s issues with the UK, catholic protestant, car bombs etc

28. I only know about it because I watch quite a few videos on random history topics. I learned what I know about it from CGP Grey’s video on the Northern Irish flag.

    It’s not taught it high school world history because we take a very broad view of history since we only have a year to be taught the history of the world outside the US.

29. So I’ll lead off saying I grew up in Massachusetts, which has a whole lot of people with Irish ancestry, in the 90s, when peace was finally being brokered.

    I didn’t specifically learn the word Troubles until I was older and if it ever came up in school, it was too brief to remember (we did learn about the potato famine though), but I was aware for longer than I can remember that there was some terrorism and violence between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and events would occasionally make the Boston Globe.

    Clinton negotiating the peace accords was a very big deal around my area and got a fair bit of coverage. I was in high school at the time so it was discussed as current events in class.

30. It was covered in the news. It’s hardly something people paid much attention to though.

31. Not very much.

    We find the whole thing very confusing. I live right next door to the former Yugoslavia and I find *that* whole mess to be less confusing than what’s gone on in Northern Ireland.

    Also, we kind of take our ‘Jim Crow’ and assume that it’s directly analogous, with the Protestants standing in for the white Southerners and the Catholics standing in for the black Southerners. I presume that this would, at the most, be loosely analogous.

32. I do know a little bit. Caveat: I am originally from Boston. At one point we had a mural painted on the side of the building supporting Sinn Féin.

    There also used to be a lot of bumper stickers that said 26+11=1 with the 26 and green and the 11 in orange.

    I also know about it because my parents lived in London in the mid 90s and it wasn’t uncommon that my mother would have to get off an underground train on her way to work because of a bomb threat.

    That did not make her sympathetic to the cause.

33. We sort of know what “the troubles” means, but mostly without any details, unless we learned from Irish friends or relatives. Some of our older people (myself included) remember seeing some stuff on the news, like Bloody Sunday and the assassination of Lord Mountbatten. Most younger people tend to think of it as something that happened a long time ago.

34. Surprisingly I learned quite a bit about it in 3rd grade of all places and the role of the united states played in the good friday agreement.