Teaching the Troubles at NHA: How much do you teach? How much do you let students discover?

The Seven Documents

Previously, we would jump into the Northern Ireland unit with an Inquiry Activity. After practicing questioning technique with a single image and a discussion about what makes a good research question, pairs of students--or groups of three--look through seven compelling documents searching for clues to what was going on, making inferences and bringing up questions to be used for further research.

The lesson is good for building curiosity but is also a balancing act. How much do students need to already know about this conflict to make connections between the things they are seeing? How much preliminary information is too much and limits their curiosity?

This year, the inquiry activity comes after the new flag lesson. The students have read a poem about the symbolism of flag burning in Belfast. They have posed some questions about it and found answers. They have looked at photographs captioned with the stories of the Belfast children and teens who took the images, images describing a struggle. They have looked at the Union Jack and the Irish Tricolor. They have drawn them into their journals. They have discovered the difference between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom.

So, this year, I wondered if they already knew too much. But they didn't. Overall, I think their enthusiasm for the activity only increased. They knew enough.

And they needed a little more. To know that "Republican" in Northern Ireland means Nationalist and frequently Catholic, and to know that "Ulster" in an organization's name indicates a Loyalist leaning and usually Protestantism helps them to navigate a document that is a timeline of the murdered: "Wait, this guy is Catholic but was killed by a Republican organization!" "Maybe it's like with gangs... like he snitched..."

The students need to know just a little. Then, they need to embrace the search to know more.