An image promoting Teaching the Troubles event for CRC's Good Relations week

From reporting the Troubles to Troubles in the classroom

17th September 2024, Online* 7- 8.15pm

HTANI has organised an online session, for CRC’s Good Relations Week, that will explore current history teaching practice in NI schools. Members of HTANI will be joined by Deric Henderson, Ivan Little and Freya McClements to discuss the potential contribution of journalistic practice to the the teaching of the Troubles in classrooms.

Freya McClements is northern editor of the Irish Times and co-author of Children of the Troubles. Deric Henderson and Ivan Little are experienced journalists who reported on the Northern Ireland conflict for most of its duration. Subsequently, their two highly acclaimed compilations of reporting from the time have made an important contribution to public understanding of the period from the insider perspective of those who recorded those turbulent and horrific years.

In more recent times, journalism has been openly critical of the role of schools, and history teachers, in failing to adequately provide young people with a grounded understanding of the nature of the conflict and its continuing impact on Ireland in the present.

This session brings together the journalists, history teachers and interested others, first to listen to Deric and Ivan’s experiences, then to consider the validity of criticisms of current history teaching practice and discuss the contribution that the journalistic legacy might make to enhancing the teaching of the Troubles in classrooms.

*Zoom link will be posted closer to the event date