Secret Diary of an Irish Teacher: a nostalgic night in Kerry
I spent last week in Kerry. School holidays are the best. Who could pretend otherwise?
I’ve been visiting the same spot for thirty years now. As a child, I’d go to mass in the village with my aunty who died several years ago. I remember collecting the papers in the shop across the way for her afterwards, a wooden plank separating me from coveted sweets, and later, cigarettes. In our teens, myself and my cousin went to the Irish college, a stone’s throw from the church doors. We made exotic friends – all the way from Dublin! I had my first real crush there. I very nearly had my first kiss.
Kerry was my first taste of freedom. My parents left me with my aunty from the age of nine. My son is nine now, but the Irish college is gone, the shop is closed, and the once bustling church looks sad, like a forgotten song.
It’s with some nostalgia then that I arrive, Tuesday last, at the village pub, now the only window lit along a windswept strip.
“Close the door properly behind you, now,” the bean an tí barks at us as we fall in, the rain pelting sideways behind us. She eyes my three kids sharply but we’re quick to warm her with a smile and a mention of our connection to the place.
Satisfied, she’s soon offering me a range of tonics for the local gin. The rural heart can have a cold snap at its surface, before you hit the warmer patches.
Within minutes we’re settled, shuffling cards and opening Tayto for the kids, the 6:01 News a gentle hum behind us. Until it’s turned up. Full blast and without an apology. Peat-cutters in Galway are being cleared of all charges against them. This case has been on-going since summer 2012, when the four men were accused of breaking EU law regarding the protection of raised bogs.
A cheer rises from herself and the four previously inanimate men at the bar, celebrating the old ways, the ancient traditions. One of the acquitted, Michael Darcy, announces that ‘this a great day for rural Ireland.’
And so, it seems. But somehow, as a teacher who accompanies students on climate marches, I feel like the enemy. I smile, but a significant part of me feels uneasy.
We teach students about sustainability and we teach them about climate change. Our students know the science and they’re fervent and confident in their position and their rhetoric. But how much time have they spent in places like these? How often have they talked with older people in rural communities? Or how eagerly have we sought information about these ways of life? As with the recent swing towards Sinn Féin, I wonder if the generation gap in Ireland is getting bigger than ever before. Is climate action, however necessary, playing a part in this? Are teachers like myself, the bridging generation, focused on teaching the science of fuel emissions, deepening that chasm?
Here I am, swanning in from the city, sipping their local tipple but in many other ways, I’ve turned my back on them. This village, full of my treasured ‘firsts’ is characterised by these people’s ‘lasts.’
Do the protesting kids in cities really know about the peat-cutters or the cattle farmers of Ireland? I know I’ve never brought it up with them. Has anyone?
Thankfully, yes. Two teachers have developed a full course on climate justice under the title of Sustainability. This clearly documents the need to support rural communities in transitioning; it takes a nuanced and informed approach. But I’ve no idea how many schools offer it. Just last week I met a very charming teenager through an old friend. I asked her if she’d marched for climate and she said yes. I asked her if she knew what exactly she’d been marching for? She said no.
One of my favourite poems to teach is ‘Digging’, by Seamus Heaney. When in Abu Dhabi, I taught it along with some Irish dancing; I happily exported my love of Ireland, its rich literature, its traditions. The lines come back to me, sitting in this rural pub, Heaney remembering his grandfather who ‘cut more turf in a day than any other man on Toner’s bog.’
Along with the science, kids should be invited to hear ‘the squelch and slap of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge.’ The students fighting for climate action and the teachers supporting them are right. There’s no question of that. The activism is of course necessary. But there’s a distance between being right and being connected and I’m not convinced we’ve done enough across schools and in our homes to focus on the latter. I hope I’m wrong and that teachers and parents, beyond this one course, have fully, critically engaged with the issues of climate action in a considered way. Because if we haven’t, we’ve done our children a disservice. We should collectively mourn the passing of old traditions. But children can’t mourn what they never knew or experienced, or what they’ve never been told.
Turf has been running through our hands for centuries, burning in our fires, inviting friends and strangers in. My children won’t experience it, but I hope they remember this night in Kerry; I hope they remember the old faces cheering at the television, raising their glasses to an older time.
