“Whatever you say, say nothing”: ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland’s draft History curriculum…

Dr Clare McAuley is a lecturer in the School of Education, Ulster University The Department of Education’s draft Northern Ireland Curriculum 2028 is built on specified knowledge. Then it arrives at ‘the Troubles’ and devotes one unelaborated content statement to the conflict, its peace processes and continuing legacies. Seamus Heaney gave the old wisdom its permanent form in 1975, in a poem whose title everyone in Northern Ireland knows without ever needing to have read it, “Whatever you say,...