The Irish Famine in American School Curricula

Eire-Ireland:Journal of Irish Studies, Spring-Summer, 2002 by Thomas J. Archdeacon

Trivializing the famine curriculum movement because it involves ethnic politics would be wrong. Denying a group its history is a means of reducing its political and social influence. Among academics in the United States, the trend in recent years has been to demonize Irish immigrants for their role in American racism rather than to see them in a sympathetic light. (21) That the sesquicentennial of the potato famine would be the occasion for a reassertion of Irish consciousness is not surprising. Activists in states beyond New Jersey also took up the cause. Representatives Steven Tolman and Kevin Honan joined Senators Warren Tolman and Edward J. Clancy in putting forward legislation to incorporate the famine in the school curriculum of Massachusetts. Representative Michael McGeehan sponsored a similar bill in Pennsylvania, as did other lawmakers in Illinois. (22)

II

Developments in New York State soon overshadowed those elsewhere. There, the members of the American Irish Teachers Organization were eager to mark the sesquicentennial of the famine. The teachers argued that the famine deserved attention as the greatest social catastrophe of nineteenth-century Europe, and they called attention to its obvious impact on the history of the United States. Moreover, they believed that recalling U.S. efforts to relieve the famine victims of the 1840s carried important lessons about America's role in fighting world starvation today. (23)

The teachers thought that the most constructive option lay in an emendation of the 1994 state law mandating courses of instruction in human rights. Accordingly, Ann Garvey, the president of the organization, approached Assemblyman Joseph Crowley (Democrat, Queens). Crowley, whose mother is from Ireland, agreed to sponsor legislation that would make instruction about the Great Irish Famine a mandatory part of the curriculum in the public and private schools of the state. (24) His measure was an ingenious amendment (A.6510) that inserted ten words at two points in subdivisions of section 801 of the state's education law. The key section read:

   In order to promote a spirit of patriotic and civic service and obligation
   and to foster in the children of the state moral and intellectual qualities
   which are essential in preparing to meet the obligations of citizenship in
   peace or in war, the regents of The University of the State of New York
   shall prescribe courses of instruction in patriotism, citizenship, and
   human rights issues, with particular attention to the study of the
   inhumanity of genocide, slavery, [and] the Holocaust, and the mass
   starvation in Ireland from 1845 to 1850, to be maintained and followed in
   all the schools of the state. (25)

Bipartisan support grew quickly for the amendment. In the Assembly, Richard Keane (Democrat, Buffalo), Elizabeth Connelly (Democrat, Staten Island), Donna Ferrara (Republican, Long Island), and Michael Balboni (Republican, Long Island) joined Crowley, who is the secretary of the American Irish Legislators' Society. Jewish leaders in the chamber, including Speaker Sheldon Silver (Democrat, New York) and Steven Saunders (Democrat, New York), endorsed the bill. Jeffrion Aubry (Democrat, Queens), who was the chair of the legislature's Black and Puerto Rican Caucus, likewise agreed that a clear connection existed between the famine and the human rights subjects already singled out for inclusion. "It comes from a realization of the connections that human beings have in both the enormous good and the enormous bad that they're capable of doing," Aubry stated, "and that they're not limited to any one racial group." (26)