PADDY' S DAY THE WEARING OF THE GREEN http://bit.ly/ZE9Sxr

LORD MUCK ANALINGUS VIDEO Check Out IrelandYouTube http://irelandyoutube.blogspot.com/

ANALINGUS LORD MUCK http://irelandyoutube.blogspot.com/

CHECK OUT IRISH BLOG http://bitly.com/NOSJOS

Hunger: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

By Bill Bigelow

March 15, 2012 "Huffington Post' -- "Wear green on St. Patrick's Day or get pinched." That pretty much sums up the Irish American "curriculum" that I learned when I was in school. Yes, I recall a nod to the so-called Potato Famine, but it was mentioned only in passing.

Sadly, today's high school textbooks continue to largely ignore the famine, despite the fact that it was responsible for unimaginable suffering and the deaths of more than a million Irish peasants, and that it triggered the greatest wave of Irish immigration in U.S. history. Nor do textbooks make any attempt to help students link famines past and present.

Yet there is no shortage of material that can bring these dramatic events to life in the classroom. In my own high school social studies classes, I begin with Sinead O'Connor's haunting rendition of "Skibbereen," which includes the verse:
... Oh it's well I do remember, that bleak

December day,

The landlord and the sheriff came, to drive

Us all away

They set my roof on fire, with their cursed

English spleen

And that's another reason why I left old

Skibbereen.

By contrast, Holt McDougal's U.S. history textbook The Americans, devotes a flat two sentences to "The Great Potato Famine." Prentice Hall's America: Pathways to the Present fails to offer a single quote from the time. The text calls the famine a "horrible disaster," as if it were a natural calamity like an earthquake. And in an awful single paragraph, Houghton Mifflin's The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People blames the "ravages of famine" simply on "a blight," and the only contemporaneous quote comes, inappropriately, from a landlord, who describes the surviving tenants as "famished and ghastly skeletons." Uniformly, social studies textbooks fail to allow the Irish to speak for themselves, to narrate their own horror.

These timid slivers of knowledge not only deprive students of rich lessons in Irish-American history -- they exemplify much of what is wrong with today's curricular reliance on corporate-produced textbooks.

First, does anyone really think that students will remember anything from the books' dull and lifeless paragraphs? Today's textbooks contain no stories of actual people. We meet no one, learn nothing of anyone's life, encounter no injustice, no resistance. This is a curriculum bound for boredom. As someone who spent almost 30 years teaching high school social studies, I can testify that students will be unlikely to seek to learn more about events so emptied of drama, emotion, and humanity.

Nor do these texts raise any critical questions for students to consider. For example, it's important for students to learn that the crop failure in Ireland affected only the potato -- during the worst famine years, other food production was robust. Michael Pollan notes in The Botany of Desire, "Ireland's was surely the biggest experiment in monoculture ever attempted and surely the most convincing proof of its folly." But if only this one variety of potato, the Lumper, failed, and other crops thrived, why did people starve?

Thomas Gallagher points out in Paddy's Lament, that during the first winter of famine, 1846-47, as perhaps 400,000 Irish peasants starved, landlords exported 17 million pounds sterling worth of grain, cattle, pigs, flour, eggs, and poultry -- food that could have prevented those deaths. Throughout the famine, as Gallagher notes, there was an abundance of food produced in Ireland, yet the landlords exported it to markets abroad.

The school curriculum could and should ask students to reflect on the contradiction of starvation amidst plenty, on the ethics of food exports amidst famine. And it should ask why these patterns persist into our own time.

More than a century and a half after the "Great Famine," we live with similar, perhaps even more glaring contradictions. Raj Patel opens his book, Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World's Food System: "Today, when we produce more food than ever before, more than one in ten people on Earth are hungry. The hunger of 800 million happens at the same time as another historical first: that they are outnumbered by the one billion people on this planet who are overweight."

Patel's book sets out to account for "the rot at the core of the modern food system." This is a curricular journey that our students should also be on -- reflecting on patterns of poverty, power, and inequality that stretch from 19th-century Ireland to 21st-century Africa, India, Appalachia, and Oakland -- that explore what happens when food and land are regarded purely as commodities in a global system of profit.

But today's corporate textbook-producers are no more interested in feeding student curiosity about this inequality than were British landlords interested in feeding Irish peasants. Take Pearson, the global publishing giant. At its website, the corporation announces (redundantly) that "we measure our progress against three key measures: earnings, cash and return on invested capital." The Pearson empire had 2011 worldwide sales of more than $9 billion -- that's nine thousand million dollars, as I might tell my students. Multinationals like Pearson have no interest in promoting critical thinking about an economic system whose profit-first premises they embrace with gusto.

As mentioned, there is no absence of teaching materials on the Irish famine that can touch head and heart. In a role play, "Hunger on Trial," that I wrote and taught to my own students in Portland, Ore. -- included at the Zinn Education Project website -- students investigate who or what was responsible for the famine. The British landlords, who demanded rent from the starving poor and exported other food crops? The British government, which allowed these food exports and offered scant aid to Irish peasants? The Anglican Church, which failed to denounce selfish landlords or to act on behalf of the poor? A system of distribution, which sacrificed Irish peasants to the logic of colonialism and the capitalist market?

These are rich and troubling ethical questions. They are exactly the kind of issues that fire students to life and allow them to see that history is not simply a chronology of dead facts stretching through time.

So go ahead: Have a Guinness, wear a bit of green, and put on the Chieftains. But let's honor the Irish with our curiosity. Let's make sure that our schools show some respect, by studying the social forces that starved and uprooted over a million Irish -- and that are starving and uprooting people today.

Bill Bigelow - Co-director, Zinn Education Project; Curriculum editor, Rethinking Schools

"Skibbereen"

By Sinead O'Connor.



Video embedded in this article by ICH


Share

Follow the discussion
Comments (18)
Sort by: Date Rating Last Activity

Frank · 12 hours ago
Contrast the treatment (or lack of it) with copious materials on the holocaust.

Report
Reply1 reply · active 11 hours ago

Ironhead · 11 hours ago
"Let them eat their children. It will kill two birds with one stone..." Queen Victoria

Report
Reply1 reply · active 8 hours ago

hypatia · 11 hours ago
then they had to go through the nightmare of ellis island and being checked for admission to the US, some being denied entry. There was no food stamps for the lucky Irish that were admitted into the US. No free housing and no free healthcare. Of any immigrants to the US, it was the people at this time that came here that I admire the most for their endurance and patience with the bigotry that met them by the WASP. They really had to fend for themselves, unlike the over-weight illegal immigrants of today that stand in grocery line ahead of you and whip out their welfare card to pay for their cart of groceries and then open their wallet brimming with 100 dollar bills to pay for the stereo and other non-food items (its like they want you to see all their cash, because they make a big effort to flash it around).

There's been quite a few murders of whites of this magnitude and larger in history. Mostly it gets shoved under the carpet, but it's good to remember that victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing come in all colors. There was also the Russian one that Stalin did killing something like 20 million Christian russians.

Humanity never learns.

Pearson:

Glad he brought Pearson up. Pearson is in the business of propaganda too. The 10th anniversary of 9/11 gave them the opportunity to make some big bucks:

This article is from the now dead American Pendulum, which was destroyed by some sly ones. Used to be good site but they still have some of the old articles and this one is perfect about Pearson:
http://www.americanpendulum.com/2011/09/01/pearso...

here is Pearson's Learning Guide in PDF format:
http://www.onlinelearningexchange.com/content/ass...

Report
Reply4 replies · active 8 hours ago

Chris & Mary Fogarty · 10 hours ago
Grarifying to see this piece of truth-telling. For more see my www.irishholocaust.org. Be sure to click on its map to learn which Brit reg't starved your relatives.

Report
Reply

refirex · 10 hours ago
Similar to the deliberate destruction of the buffalo in order to wipe out the plains Indians.

Report
Reply

jan36 · 9 hours ago
Whats in these words ? famine / genocide maybe its blame or fault . I contest that prince-ably ittle has changed FOR THE BETTERMENT OF HUMANITY since 1840's. PRIVATE Corporate entities stalk and pillage the planet at will , programmed to maximize profits .Lying is '' the Art of spinning '' The avaricious is pure and in its core / heart a simplicity ,understood by all who breath or who wish to breath . I believe man is unique in the application of CAPITALISM . this capitalism is fueled by greed , Its principle enemy is community , The Irish peasants of 160 years ago we're superfluousness for a variety of reasons just like the present daily death toll of darker skins , racism is within the armory of capitalism, the Irish peasant we'er depicted in caricature as primates. i D'ONT HAVE THE ANSWER TO Hep INOCULATE humanity but i am understanding my enemy .
Happy St Patrick's Day xxxx

Report
Reply

Ron · 8 hours ago
The hatred the British must have had for the very poor Irish they ground under their feet is something of a puzzlement. Food shipped from America by the Quakers was not allowed into Irish ports by the British. It had to be transferred to British bottoms before entry.
God bless the Irish. I'm not one of them except in my heart.

Report
Reply

VoxFox · 8 hours ago
The English Ruling Class (& their American cousins) are a death-oriented group that despises everyone else on the planet - they have done so for hundreds of years, hence the British & then US Empires. These groups currently hide behind the mask of giant corporations. They need to be rooted out & thrown on the trash-heap of history.

Report
Reply

Jake · 8 hours ago
A good argument against textbooks. Many textbooks are written to please the big textbook purchasers (states that buy the same textbooks for all the schools in a state, like Texas). If they don't want something in it, it usually is taken out and vise versa. Then those same annotated texts are sold everywhere else. The good teacher doesn't rely on the textbook. He/she supplements with real world knowledge and truth as the author has done. That's getting tougher to do today with lock-step curriculum and standardized tests keyed, often, to the text.

Report
Reply

Itsafluffy · 7 hours ago
Super good to see this, being 5th generation Irish (and don't think the Scots-Irish, whether in Scotland or northern Ireland had it any differently...you do know that the majority of indentured servants in early America were Scots-Irish) and also Scots-Irish.

Now, would ICH, a leftist site, mind telling the truth about how Stalin starved several million Ukrainians to force them into collectivisation in the 1930s? BTW, Stalin did what the Brits did: sell every last ounce of food confiscated from the starving Ukrainians abroad? It's okay, leftists, to tell the truth.

Report
Reply1 reply · active 6 hours ago
12Next »
Post a new comment
Embed video

Check Spelling

Comment as a Guest, or login:
Login to IntenseDebate
Login to WordPress.com
NameEmail

Displayed next to your comments.


Not displayed publicly.

Submit Comment
Subscribe to
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate material will be removed from the site.

The last comments for : Information Clearing HouseDangerman
Thanks for the concern, Marcus. I think we should be more careful of them.
» 5 hours ago
The last comments for Netanyahu is Preparing Israeli Public Opinion for a War on Iran ThebestConspirator
Typical zionistscum fraud. "Benyamin netanyahu" is a coward and a fraud just as the zionistscum...
» 5 hours ago
The last comments for Fred Reed: More Fun Atrocities : Information Clearinrevzef
I do not agree that soldiers are just like anyone else.
True as it is that anyone who is trained as...
» 5 hours ago
F. Gajewski PhD
A Facebook friend recently introduced me to Andrew Lobaczewski's book on psychopathy.
It's...
» 5 hours ago

Saint Patricks Day: British Government to Ban all Irish Media

The British Government is to ban all Irish media for failing to obey their censorship orders previously adhered to by National broadcaster RTE, Irish Times, Indymedia Ireland. As in the past all Irish writers who tell it like it is will have to go to overseas publishing platforms with anything genuinely Irish related The unpixelated filth prior to Paddy's Lefty Crap Day coming out of Ireland, has provoked proscription from the British Government which has announced plans to ban all Irish Media, after the BBC aired graphic scenes of Irish people engaged in a highly inappropriate group activity outside the London Lord Mayor's office last night. Members of the Irish community were pictured shamelessly professing their love of Saint Patrick who “loves mankind” even the London Lord Mayor Boris Johnson.

As soon as the footage of the demo was aired, the BBC was inundated with thousands of complaints of Irish terrorists protesting at the London Lord Mayor's anti-Irish racist remarks. One caller’s views were typical: “I had just sat down in front of the TV with all of my family and suddenly the screen was filled with this massive Biggus Dickus Johnson abusing the Irish community and Saint Patrick. I think he said his name was Boris. or Patrick or summat.There was no warning and he wasn’t even pixelated. My grandmother could have been watching, but thankfully she died several years ago.”

An Irish person who lives in London who wished to remain anonymous, for fear of further racist attacks by British Tories defended the event thus: “We live in a free society. If these Tories don’t want to watch one of our Saint Patrick Day parades or dinners why don’t they just do the logical thing and switch to another channel besides the bloody BBC. Hasn’t the London Lord Mayor and his fellwo Tories got anything better to do with their time than sit around complaining? Jaysus H Chrrist!”

However, as the number of Irish complaints climbed to over a million, a spokesman for the communications regulator Ofcom announced that it would be taking action after seeing a copy of Saint Patrick's Day parade membership list: “This document is utterly obscene. I’ve never seen anything like it: just pages and pages of can*ts and as for the committee, it’s just a collection of Irish mother-foc*kers. I can’t see any justification for there being that number of can*ts in one place so we have no option but to recommend that all irish organisations be closed down.”

Last night, as the BBC logged its ten billionth complaint (from an Irish tribesman in the Amazonian jungle) Mediawatch remained defiant. An upbeat London Lord Mayor told said: “We shall fight on against the Irish You cannot silence the Boris John son the London Lord Mayor. If I get my way we’re going to be on the BBC quite a lot in the next few weeks before the election in May against that barsteward Livingstone!

Meanwhile in London last night Boris was pacing up and down in open-fly readiness for his wet run for Saint Patrick's Day and spurted the vast contents of his outsize bladder high into the air, describing a golden arc from Aldwych in the South to the Caledonian Road in the North visible for miles around, as screaming Irish victims in Kilburn and Cricklewood tumbled from the upper deck of their buses above their head and floated downstream on the rising tide Borismania pouring from the waterlogged pants of thousands of startled racist bigoted, Tory spectators, their urinary tracts blissfully relaxed by discharging pint after pint of pent-up pints down their sodden legs and into the swirling open urinal that was formerly called the Thames as they practiced their ancestry lineage for Paddy's Day.

A traditional Blue nose Lord Mayor of London started each day by eating a poor Irish person for breakfast which thankfully Boris has thus far mercifully refrained from. The unfortunate Irish were served to him by a stable of butlers and attendants. Before his traditional round of morning of rugby or cricket (in which the head of a homeless man is used for a ball), he spends a half hour in the Blue Nose Family room, where he and his father reaffirm their ancestral connection to blue-blooded types, who either owned slaves or coveted them. If you are worried that noses might try and bring back slavery, we will do absolutely nothing to allay your fears. A nose named Owen Paterson who interned Marian price without trial in British Occupied Ireland recently paid an exorbitant sum for a colon operation, that made his gas smell like Boris or daisies. When asked a difficult
question about odious Internment without trial by an Irish reporter, he will silently break wind and ask, "My gosh. Do you smell daisies?" as a diversion. Its a typical case say of the Johnson, Cameron stiff upper nose as opposed to their stiff upper lip.

TORIES TAKING THE PISS PROCESS - http://twitpic.com/photos/BrianClarkeNUJ

Meanwhile in London last night Boris was pacing up and down in open-fly readiness for his wet run for Saint Patrick's Day and spurted the vast contents of his outsize bladder high into the air, describing a golden arc from Aldwych in the South to the Caledonian Road in the North visible for miles around, as screaming Irish victims in Kilburn and Cricklewood tumbled from the upper deck of their buses above their head and floated downstream on the rising tide of Borismania pouring from the waterlogged pants of thousands of startled racist bigoted, Tory spectators, their urinary tracts blissfully relaxed by discharging pint after pint of pent-up pints down their sodden legs and into the swirling open urinal that was formerly called the Thames as they practiced their ancestry lineage for Paddy's Day.

To call the annual, self-financing, St Patrick's Day dinner "lefty crap" is both profoundly ill-informed and also an attack on Irish Londoners and their contribution to this city. Irish Londoners came together to celebrate the part they play in the life of London - and Boris Johnson has slapped them in the face. He is out of touch and ignorant of the facts.

"Boris Johnson’s Irish racism is no more acceptable than any other racism Ireland
Feb
"10
2012

From the Guardian this morning:

Over the years a range of individuals and organisations have worked positively in London to tackle myths, ignorance and prejudice about the Irish community. Yet in this week’s New Statesman, Boris Johnsonattacks a major, mainstream, Irish community event, the annual St Patrick’s Day dinner, as “lefty crap”, falsely claiming it was “£20,000 on a dinner at the Dorchester for Sinn Féin”. The fact is that the annual St Patrick’s Day event was a self-financing community event attended by a wide range of Irish actors, politicians from many parties, community figures and celebrities, including Bob Geldof, the Irish ambassador, TV and radio presenter Dermot O’Leary and actress Pauline McLynn.

When Boris Johnson cancelled the annual St Patrick’s Day dinner in 2009 there was widespread disbelief about his decision. His remarks this week reveal what lay behind that decision. Many Londoners will be disturbed by the mayor of London’s contemptuous remarks about a community which has given, and continues to give, so much to our capital city.


It’s often assumed that if a person is white and sounds British (and there’s no doubt that describes me) they can have no idea about what racism really is.

Oh yes they can: my name gives clear indication of my origins and it’s one I’m proud of. I’m proud as a result to have an Irish passport. And I know too well from my experience and the experience of my wife’s family, for she’s Irish too, just how powerful and destructive Irish racism was in the UK until very recently. Johnson makes clear it still simmers just below the surface in his world. And it’s as unacceptable to be racist about the Irish as anyone else. Johnson, please take note."