This evening the Dáil will debate the Traveller Culture and History in Education Bill 2018.
It is being brought forward by the Independent TD for Donegal, Thomas Pringle after having been initiated in the Seanad in 2018 by former Senator Collette Kelleher.
The Bill, which has already passed final stage in the Seanad (October 2019) originally aimed to provide for the mandatory inclusion of traveller culture and history in the curriculum by recognised schools in the State.
However, following amendments by then Minister for Education Joe McHugh, the Bill will now provide for recognised schools to “promote a knowledge and understanding of the culture and history of the Traveller community.”
Minister McHugh had maintained at the time if the original objective of the Bill had been accepted, it would have created a situation whereby the only subject area prescribed by law in this jurisdiction would be Traveller culture and history, granting it a different status from all other subjects, including Irish, English and maths.
Ms Kelleher responded by insisting that allowing schools to merely ‘promote’ the teaching of traveller history and culture was an “omission” that amounted to an ongoing and “dangerous airbrushing of Ireland’s only recognised ethnic minority from its rightful place in history.”
Ms Kelleher, who is a Certified Practitioner in Consulting and Change with the Tavistock Institute, insisted at the time that teaching Traveller culture and history in education “needs to be mandatory.”:
“Well meaning, well intentioned, aspirational guidelines and directions to schools, done with undoubted goodwill but without the force of law, simply do not deliver to all Travellers the teaching of Traveller culture and history.”
Attempts were also made to have teaching of Traveller history and culture included as a mandatory part of the curriculum in all degree level courses in education, at higher education institutions and for it to be promoted as a core competence of teachers in their ongoing professional development.
These were rejected.
The Bill, as amended, looks almost certain to become law after the Chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science wrote to Minister Norma Foley to say that the Committee fully supports the Bill.
Family in their decorated caravan en route to the Cahirmee Horse Fair at Buttevant, Co. Cork, Date: July 1954 – Photo Credit: Frank Fullard