alt.education

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/031608a.html

St. Patrick's Day & Irish Resistance

Another Saint Patrick's Day is here, with its tacky kegs of green
beer, leprechauns, lucky charms, fake plastic hats and all imaginable
variety of gaudy faux-Irish...um..."charm."

But it needn't be so. The holiday offers up an incredible opportunity
to expose children (and adults, of course) to the history of struggle
of a courageous people -- England's first and last colony -- and, by
extension, to shed light on the legacy of colonization and imperialism
and the universal nature of popular resistance.

At the risk of using one of the thankfully less egregious cliches, the
Irish have long been a musical and literate people, a country where,
as the poet said, "All her wars are merry, and all her songs are sad."

Even the most cursory outline of Irish history yields a treasure trove
of struggles, uprisings, and oppression -- the practice field on which
the British Empire honed its techniques. Fortunately, for those whose
task is to educate, the songs are beautiful, moving, and largely self-
explanatory.

While the diaspora revels in the Luck O' the Irish and sports "Kiss
Me, I'm Irish" buttons, we'll be singing "The wearing of the Green," a
concise, if simplified explication of the tradition of wearing green.

Distilled by generations of mass marketing into Irish Pride, the
practice was actually a passive form of resistance to British rule,
symbolizing the culture, language, religion and traditions ruthlessly
suppressed in the wake of the Wolfe Tone and other uprisings (two
centuries ago).

"It's the most distressed country that you have ever seen/They're
hanging men and women for the wearing of the green."

The color and practice are also a convenient symbol for the natural --
and unstoppable -- force for human liberation.

The shamrock, rather than a mere symbol of luck, is chosen for its
resilience and invincibility: "You may take the shamrock from your hat
and cast it on the sod/But it will take root and flourish there,
though underfoot it's trod."

Popular resistance struggles have invoked the image of nature time and
again to illustrate the inevitability of their victory. Sadly, of
course, forces of reaction have been crafty and merciless in their
exercise of power in repression.

But hope springs eternal: "When the law can keep the blades of grass
from growing where they grow/And when the leaves in summertime their
verdure dare not show/Then I will change the color that I wear in my
corbeen/But 'til that day, please God, I'll stick to wearing of the
green."

With students from many different countries, the study of the Great
Hunger -- where almost half of Ireland's population either died or
fled in the space of a generation -- lends itself quite well to the
general study of diaspora and immigration.

Our mostly first-generation students are especially quick to grok the
sense of isolation and distance felt by recent immigrants, and take to
the strains of Danny Boy and The Leaving of Liverpool with a
particular warmth.

The difference for their own generation is that their parents can
travel back to Haiti, the DR, Puerto Rico, Thailand, China, Nigeria,
Portugal, Russia or other countries from which they come.

Those of African descent are also especially disposed to understand
being robbed of their languages, culture and history, and so a cross-
cultural vortex of people's history is easily explored.

Even the specific language has its overlaps. "Puedan cortar las
flores, pero no pueden parar la primavera" is yet another testament to
the use of natural imagery and the belief in the inevitability of
liberation.

And with this background easily prepared, children whose eyes might
otherwise glaze over at the archaic language sit in rapt attention at
the recitation of Padraig Pearse's The Rebel.

Many of them, like Pearse's Rebel, are "come of the seed of the
people." It is hardly a stretch that, by the end, they share the
Rebel's scorn for his tormentors and his warning to his people's
masters:

"Beware. Beware of the thing that is coming. Beware of the risen
people, who shall take what ye would not give. Did you think to
conquer the people? Or that law is stronger than life, or than man's
desire to be free?"

It's always an exhilarating moment, and a potent opportunity, to
invest a holiday marketed as one more excuse to party with a bit more
meaning and purpose -- and hope, so that one day the "tyrants,
hypocrites, and liars" might tremble at The Thing That is Coming.

hear Danny's rendition of Padraig Pearse's The Rebel here:
http://www.redress.cc/cms-files/rebel.wav
and The Wearing of the Green here:
http://www.redress.cc/cms-files/wearing_green.wav