Ireland and America have been linked in their struggle for freedom ever since the Revolution, when George Washington and his men celebrated St. Patrick’s Day and toasted the hoped-for victory of both Irish and Americans against the British. And both countries have, for years and certainly in the present day, experienced educational crises and a loss of national identity, especially among younger generations.
As November 10 is the anniversary of Padraig (Patrick) Pearse’s birth, I was reading some passages from this Irish speaker, poet, intellectual, revolutionary, and patriot who led the courageous but doomed 1916 Easter Rising. While Pearse is most famous for reading the Proclamation of the Irish Republic outside the Dublin General Post Office (pictured above) and fighting there until the British slaughter of Irishmen prompted his surrender for execution to save his countrymen, Pearse had many plans and hopes for Ireland long before that rising. He even visited America and was able to see what a country built on freedom looks like.
A major preoccupation of Pearse was to save the Irish language from extinction, because the English had spent centuries imposing incredibly tyrannical laws to try and stamp out traditional Irish language, dress, culture, and Catholic religious practice. In Ireland for many years, it was illegal to wear the native clothing, speak the native tongue, and worship freely. Pearse understood that the Irish needed to hold on to the language and beliefs that had once made their island so great and such a center of culture during the “Dark Ages” and the early medieval period. To accomplish this preservation and restoration, the right sort of education was in order.
Pearse posited, “I claim that the ancient Irish system possessed pre-eminently two characteristics: first, freedom of the individual, and secondly, an adequate inspiration. Without these two things you cannot have education, no matter how well you may elaborate educational machinery, no matter how you may multiply educational programmes.”
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This is a view of education which can apply just as much to America as to Ireland. Our education system in America now is all about socialism, communism, and groupthink. It does everything it can to discourage individualism, personal responsibility, original thinking, and personal integrity. All of our public schools and universities and most of our private ones train young Americans to think of people not as individuals, but as representatives of certain economic, racial, and sexual groups.
Children’s authors tell little kids that the dynamically different and unique Founding Fathers were all the same because they were all white. Women and racial minorities are told that if they don’t vote Democrat, they are stupid and worthless. If someone dares to try and have independent thought, he can never hope to have a career in academia, Hollywood, or mainstream media. America became the leader of the free world politically, philosophically, culturally, and technologically because we were a country of independent thinkers and individualists. It used to be that we took charge of our own lives without waiting around for the government or a political organization to do all the work for us. We have to return to that mentality in our education and parenting of young people if we ever hope to restore America.
And as Pearse said, an inspiration is necessary. Both Irishmen and Americans have for centuries found freedom a great inspiration, along with Judeo-Christian faith. Sadly, the education system in both countries now seems much more focused on making people hate the past and feel hopeless for the future. Leftists act and talk as if there is no God, no God-given rights, and race and economic class are destiny. If we are able to overcome the propaganda and recapture the inspiration, we can defeat them.
