Making the invisible visible: managing tensions around including Traveller culture and history in the curriculum at primary and post-primary levels

Abstract

The formal recognition of Travellers as a distinct ethnic group by the Irish State in 2017 was arguably a significant step towards redressing the pernicious and endemic institutional racism and marginalisation that Travellers have historically experienced in Ireland. It was announced by the Irish Government in October 2018 that a review of the place of Travellers in existing school curricula would be undertaken, with a view to including Traveller history and culture at primary and post-primary levels. While there are benefits associated with curricular recognition, including its capacity to potentially disrupt the reiterative reproduction of institutional racism at a formal curricular level, a significant body of literature highlights the shortcomings associated with additive curricular approaches. These include tokenism and a failure to challenge dominant mainstream-centric perspectives and wider systemic inequities. The potential for curricular interventions to obscure or side-line critical consideration of the role of teachers’ and student teachers’ subjectivities, privileges and biases in perpetuating inequities is another dimension of this critique. This article draws on critical social justice literature, including tools from Critical Whiteness studies, to critically explore anti-Traveller racism and to analyse the tensions inherent in including Traveller culture and history in Irish primary and post-primary curricula.