Just curious if it was taught at school or on the news?

38 comments

  1. It’s not taught in schools, but I’ve never met an American claiming Irish heritage that didn’t have a rudimentary, if lacking nuance, understanding of the Troubles and Irish oppression more generally.

  2. It’s not taught in schools here. There are folks who claim Irish heritage who don’t know anything about the Troubles.

  3. It was in the news when there wasn’t something domestic more overriding to push it out. When there was, you’d have to go looking rather than seeing it in the hour long evening news or finding it on the front page or something.

    We covered them briefly in school, but there is no standardized curriculum so that will vary wildly. I suspect many never did. When I was in high school in the 00’s history class mostly tapered off at the end of the cold war with the fallout from the USSR’s collapse dominating what was covered, so other world events in the recent era got little if any coverage.

  4. Quite a bit in both ways, we have a lot of Irish people on the US. That said, you may find that a lot of Irish people in the US have views that differ from a lot of people in Ireland (including first and second generation Irish people and Irish immigrants). For example, a decent amount of the US is pro IRA.

    School focuses on older issue. The potato famine is covered quite a bit and many schools read “A modest Proposal”. Modern issues are sort of left out, but we don’t teach much about modern issues at the high school level.

  5. Was not taught about The Troubles nor the Potato Famine.
    I learned about the IRA through my older sister whom took political science classes and did an externship regarding the IRA in the late 00s

  6. I graduated high school in 2006 and it was not taught in school. I don’t think I even knew about it until later.

  7. Not really my boyfriend is 1/4 Irish. His dad is 1/2. His grandfather immigrated to the US. He tells people with no issue.

    I know his father gets frustrated when people comment of his hair color and make leprechaun jokes. They all 3 have really red hair with red beards and blue eyes. All 3 are very pale as well.

  8. It wasn’t actively taught in school nor is it talked about much in the news (though I’m too young for it to be fresh news). I know about The Troubles because I’m an independent student of history. I should note that the bulk of Irish immigration happened earlier. The Potato Famine in the 1800s is very well known and is why many people’s ancestors came here.

  9. The most influential influx of Irish into the US was in the 1840’s due to the potato famine, which was significantly before the Troubles. Therefore, the Troubles don’t really play much into Irish-American herritage.

  10. It may be touched on, but rarely in great detail. The experience of living through it also isn’t well known, as most people don’t delve into the idea of living with the people were responsible for so much of the violence.

    I recall a podcast I listened to a while back that had a woman tell the story of her parent(s?) being kidnapped and still seeing the assailants faces at the store years later. That let me know how deep that topic can go and how much of it isn’t front of mind when the topic is brought up.

  11. We were taught about discrimination against Catholics such as the Irish. Maybe a day or 2.

    *Northern Virginia not GA

  12. I’m from Chicago where a lot of people have Irish heritage, and I’d even venture to say most people don’t know much, if anything, about it. The only reason I know much about it at all is because my grandfather was a huge Irish history buff and we still have relatives that live in Ireland.

  13. Don’t recall it getting taught much. But a lot of my history classes (high school 2001-2004) basically stopped with the Civil Rights Movement. Didn’t touch Vietnam, Roe v Wade, Moral Majority, or Iran Hostage, Iran-Contra or any of that.

  14. A bit yeah. It might be a Massachusetts specific curriculum thing though given that Mass has such a high amount of Irish ancestry and influence (Mass is where I went to school)

    Even outside formal schooling though, everyone with actual Irish ancestors within 2 generations is at least a little familiar with it.

  15. Here’s the list of items I was taught in history class:

    Revolutionary War

    Louis and Clark

    Civil War

    WW2 (at the end of the year, so this section never actually got finished)

    Some local state history

  16. Nope. Learnt it all from my Aunt who is the “family record keeper”. Our last name is an Irish name with the “O” knocked off because my great great great great grandfather used it as a way to avoid being identified as Irish so it’s kind of a lil folk tale in our family.

    Never once learned about Oliver Cromwell, the potato famine, or how Irish were treated in Pre mid century America once in school.

  18. I agree it’s not something you’d learn in school generally. School is about the big stuff – the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War.

  19. I learned about it by watching the news as they unfolded.

    Damn that makes me feel old.

  20. It was a current event when I was in school. We didn’t cover current events much. The news here covered The Troubles extensively.

  22. We talked about the famine in world history since it created a large wave of immigration to the US.

    The troubles were not discussed

  23. Yes, but my father (the one of Irish descent) was raised in a very Irish Catholic community in Boston including lots of families that had immigrated more recently than ours – as in, first and second generation immigrants who had experienced the Troubles firsthand.

  24. I grew up in the 70s-90s in New England, while they were happening. It was definitely on the news. The way we thought about it wasn’t quite like people describe it now, but it came up.

    It wouldn’t have come up in school- it was a bit too ‘current events’ and we didn’t really do “current events” unless you had a particularly ambitious Social Studies teacher.

  25. It wasn’t taught in school per se, but it was in the newspaper as current events and when something big happened it might come up in a related class when I WA sin high school.

  26. Never learned about it in school. Honestly In world history we never got past the Ottoman Empire. And the two years of US history the only thing we learned about other countries was like breaking away from England, then buying Texas and buying the Louisiana purchase.

    I remember reading some punk magazines in the early 80s and some mention of it but that was just random.

  27. I know that the Irish, who have problems with Americans claiming Irish ancestry, found the Americans Irish enough to beg for weapons and other types of support, during “the troubles”.

  28. The Good Friday Agreement was literally signed while I was taking high school world history and was discussed to a good extent as current events valuable for teaching world history.

  29. It’s taught in my class because I get to shape the curriculum, but it’s not in the standards or our textbook for world cultures.

  30. Yeah we all heard about it. And we all had that “one” cousin who had an “unfortunate affiliation”.

  31. I was not taught about The Troubles growing up. They were still ongoing.

  32. My honors Euro teacher was weird in that he gave a whole month to talking about the troubles. He would also devote the last two weeks of school to a unit on the Beatles if we did well on our exams. Dude was a bit of an Anglophile.

  33. Not in school but A. My dad is a big fan of all British Isles history and B. I live in Massachusetts which is basically west Ireland, and everyone knew about Whitey Bulger giving guns to the IRA and shit so I knew about it before I saw Kenneth Branagh Masturbation Hour.

  34. I’m an american and also have Irish heritage. There’s a reason I don’t call myself Irish-American, because I have no ties to Ireland besides an anscestor somewhere up the line. With that said, I have a pretty vague idea about Ireland being abused by the British empire, the potato famine, and the IRA. If I’m being honest, I think I learned more of what I do know from movies and TV than in school.

  35. Not taught in schools

    My grandfather told me some about Irish history and myths so I’m sure he told me. To what extent he learned this on his own and to what extent it was passed down I don’t know. His grandparents were all from Ireland

  36. It was very important to my grandparents that their children and grandchildren knew about our Irish heritage. Neither of them were born in Ireland but they were both raised by people who were and who had experienced English oppression firsthand. I was rather young in the 90s, so I only had a simple understanding of the troubles, but I will never, until the day I die, forget being a child and watching grown men throwing bricks and what I later learned were balloons filled with urine at children my age trying to walk to Catholic school in Northern Ireland. I know their were atrocities on both sides, but that’s not something a kid forgets seeing. I know Europeans on Reddit get all high and mighty about Americans expressing any relationship to their heritage, but I would say having Irish heritage had a big impact on who I am. It has made me a more compassionate person and more determined to speak out against injustice because there has never been a time in my life when I thought I was beyond reach of being the person who was oppressed.

  37. It was very important to my grandparents that their children and grandchildren knew about our Irish heritage. Neither of them were born in Ireland but they were both raised by people who were and who had experienced English oppression firsthand. I was rather young in the 90s, so I only had a simple understanding of the troubles, but I will never, until the day I die, forget being a child and watching grown men throwing bricks and what I later learned were balloons filled with urine at children my age trying to walk to Catholic school in Northern Ireland. I know their were atrocities on both sides, but that’s not something a kid forgets seeing. I know Europeans on Reddit get all high and mighty about Americans expressing any relationship to their heritage, but I would say having Irish heritage had a big impact on who I am. It has made me a more compassionate person and more determined to speak out against injustice because there has never been a time in my life when I thought I was beyond reach of being the person who was oppressed.

  38. Not school

    My grandfather told me about Irish history and about being Irish American so I’m sure he told me a bit

    My dad told me about “Irish Charities” and the collections they took up

    It’s wasn’t exactly an unbiased history lesson on the cause and context or exactly told as directly related to us

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