News Archive

PRESS RELEASE: 05 May 2021

Breaking the Silence: NUI Galway Students to Launch Pilot Programme on Ireland’s Dark History 

On Thursday 6th of May, five LLM candidates from the Irish Centre for Human Rights, will launch a pilot programme for secondary school students in Coláiste na Coiribe. The pilot programme, which was developed in collaboration with the Clann Project and survivors, educators and activists, aims to amplify the voices of survivors of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes and Industrial Schools and highlight the State’s continuing failure to provide comprehensive redress.   

By listening to survivors, the students realised the importance of memorialising the past abuses, which occurred in these institutions, to ensure that they do not happen again. Research on memorialisation efforts in Canada, Australia and Germany, highlighted the fact that education plays a vital role in preserving history and preventing human rights violations.  

The pilot programme is thus centred on the belief that education plays an important role in the transitional justice process and that teaching students about the dark side of a nation’s history is an important aspect of ensuring the non-recurrence of human rights violations. Given the important role that education plays in preserving history and preventing human rights violations, the authors of the lesson plan realised that survivor’s stories needed to be taught in Irish classrooms today. Many survivors of Ireland’s Institutions are growing older, and they should not have to wait for the Department of Education to change the Leaving Certificate History syllabus to have their voices heard in classrooms. As such, the authors decided to develop a lesson plan aimed at Transition Year students. The lesson plan, entitled ‘Ireland’s Dark History’, is a two-hour long lesson which aims to teach transition year students about the human rights violations which occurred in Ireland’s institutions throughout the twentieth century. It covers the Mother and Baby Homes, the Industrial Schools and the Magdalene Laundries as well as the issues of illegal adoptions and unmarked graves.  The lesson is taught through a human rights lens to ensure that people are aware of the human rights violations and the legal obligations which the Irish State has so-far failed to meet. 

The programme will be taught to students for the first time on Thursday in Coláiste na Coiribe. The authors of the programme believe that this event will provide invaluable experience and feedback which will allow them to improve the lesson plan before it will be launched online on www.openheartcitydublin.ie later this month. Once launched online, the lesson plan will be publicly available and free to download. It will also be accompanied by a guide on transitional justice and education, a PowerPoint presentation and a script which will allow any teacher in any classroom to direct the lesson themselves. Also available on the Open Heart City website, will be an archive containing additional resources including documentaries, music and newspaper articles as well as a Galway-specific lesson plan which aims to emphasise the ubiquitous nature of these institutions across Ireland.   

According to survivor and community organiser, Mary Harney - “we must teach children the history of this dark chapter in Ireland and keep that memory alive so that it never happens again”, highlighting the importance of a pilot programme like this one. 

Emily O’ Reilly, one of the students working on the project adds that “It is our hope that in the future the Irish State will incorporate historical abuses into the Irish Leaving Certificate Curriculum. Until then we will continue carrying out our pilot programme all over Ireland”. 

Survivors of institutional abuse, academics, journalists, NGOs such as Adoption Rights Alliance, Justice for Magdalenes, The Clann Project and many more have been fighting tirelessly to raise awareness of the human rights abuses which occurred in Irish Institutions during the twentieth century. The authors of this pilot programme endeavour to assist their cause. They hope that Coláiste na Coiribe will be joined by many other schools across the country in teaching students about this topic and helping to preserve survivors' testimonies. 

NOTES TO EDITOR