"We are the boys of Wexford...."

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Wednesday July 10, 2013 14:35 by Sean Crudden - impero sean at impero dot iol dot ie Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth 0879739945

Ideology?

To many people ideology is bunkum. However a closer examination will soon reveal the extent to which ideology governs behaviour.

Enniscorthy Mental Hospital

"We are the boys of Wexford
Who fought with heart and hand
To burst in twain the galling chain
And free our native land."

"Sworn to be free no more our ancient sireland
Shall shelter the despot nor the thrall."

"Then Father Murphy from Old Kilcormac
Spurred up the rock with a warning cry
'Arm! Arm!' he cried, 'For I've come to lead you.
For Ireland's freedom we will fight or die.'"

In more modern times we all remember, "My Fight for Irish Freedom" the book by, I think, Dan Breen.

However it is an interesting irony that after a millennium of struggle we have led ourselves into profound slavery and thralldom in our own day.

What I want to discuss is the ideology that inspires the educator. It seems to me that the idea of personal freedom is germane to the exercise. Somehow I see education as a loosening up, a liberating factor; freeing young people up from unnecessary fear and from idolatry and superstition; assisting women and men to look the world in the eye with understanding and without rancour.

Psychiatry today has pretensions in the area of child-rearing and education. By contrast the ideology there seems to me to be pessimistic, prescriptive, restrictive, limiting, oppressive. But, unfortunately, that ideology is in tune with the popular ideology today throughout the western world; in politics, commerce, and especially in the media. There is a plethora of hacks churning out Jansenistic political correctness creating a dubious role for themselves in the soulless harassment and pursuit of some of the most creative people in our country and in our world.

Those of you who have not seen it should look at St. Senan's Hospital, if you happen to be in Enniscorthy. It is a Vinegar Hill of another kind. A massive building more impressive than the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome it should be preserved like a butterfly in aspic as a constant reminder of an ideology which many think is dead but which, in fact, is stronger and more pervasive now than when the hospital was built.