This is true. A friend’s fourteen year old son was asked to write an essay about a hero by his Religion teacher. Presumably this type of task allows the young mind to think through notions of good, evil and personal responsibility. When asked who his subect would be Seamus Og replied “Michael Collins”. The teacher’s reply wasn’t “would it not break your poor father’s heart to name the military leader of the Irish counter-revolution as your hero?” Nor even “don’t you think his capitulation to British imperialism weighs in the balance against him?” She scolded the youth that Collins couldn’t be his hero because he was a “murderer” and before the boy could retort “well miss, a lot of people might think that executing the spies of an occupying power during a war of liberation is morally unproblematical” the teacher was offering her own suggestions. Go on. Guess who they were.
Yes. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther KIng and F#####g BONO! Now for the record, before Weekly Whiner writes an article calling me an apologist for apartheid and Jim Crow, I have strong views against both of them but that is not the point of this piece. (I also have strong views against Bono and one of the few comforts in running this site is that at least once a day someone somewhere searching for the words “Bono wanker” comes to it.)
I gave two bits of advice to the angry father. One was to give the boy a thrashing for picking Collins in the first place. The other was to write a letter to the school governors insisting that a teacher with such conformist attitudes to history and who young people chose as significant figures should not be allowed anywhere near a classroom. For want of a better phrase there is a deadening liberal complacency in the way that the past is discussed both in classrooms and in the media. Anytime the BBC wants to have a feelgood montage about the world Nelson Mandela is in there. King’s image is shorthand for “racism is bad -ok”. There are only about seven non footballers who fourteen year olds do not have thrust down their throats every day as worthy of being called a “hero”. So when a boy has the gumption to pick someone not on the approved list is cut dead like that it reveals just how narrow the educators’ horizons have become. It also tells you a lot about the pyschology of much of Belfast’s professional classes in post-settlement Ireland that they want to disown their pioneers.
Liam redux 
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