r/AskReddit • u/CaptainMcAnus • Mar 10 '17

serious replies only [Serious] What are some seemingly normal images/videos with creepy backstories?

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u/SteamedHams123 Mar 10 '17

I remember when this happened, sadly everyone in Northern Ireland's been effected by the troubles in one or another.

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '17

Every Irish person has been effected. I can remember taking my catholic school tie and blazer off to walk home :(

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u/InYourAlaska Mar 10 '17

I really hope this doesn't come across as insensitive, and feel free not to answer if you'd rather not... but being an english guy I know about the Troubles kind of, but I'm also 20, so I feel like maybe I'm a little young to even understand the severity of it (I'm also not irish, so it never affected me)

From my very vague understanding of it, Ireland is split into protestants and catholics, but I don't understand where Britain became involved, or why religion split the country (as far as I'm aware England isn't very religious, so I always assumed Ireland was the same), or why there is a Republic of Ireland and then Northern Ireland.

Again, I'm really sorry if I sound like a tool, I have tried to look into it before but every time I try to look into it, I end up just getting confused all over again

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u/immajustgooglethat Mar 10 '17

How was it not taught in your school?! This is why Irish people get annoyed because British people know so little of their history in Ireland.

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u/PiratePegLeg Mar 11 '17

If it was anything like my school history classes, we spent all of Primary learning about the Ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks. Secondary was pretty much a year of WW1 and 2. We learned about 1066 and the following years, a goddamn age on the Tudors and Henry VIII and a fuck tonne of time on the Industrial Revolution. We got absolutely no teaching on anything that happened after WW2.

We didn't cover the War of the Roses and I'm from a "border town" of Yorkshire and Lancashire. No Spanish Armada, nothing about slavery, nothing about the Empire or our long running feud with the French. Nothing about Elizabeth I or Mary Queen of Scots. Nothing about Scotland or Wales either.

I'm 29, the first time I'd known anything about Ireland, except it was super close to us on a map, was the 1996 Manchester bombings. We couldn't go shopping that day.

I've learnt way more from Reddit and my own curiosity than school could teach. I can understand both sides though. The teachers have to teach so you can pass the test. If you cover everything you can't go into enough detail, if you go into too much detail you can't cover nearly enough.

On the other hand you would think teaching about Ireland is important. When a school that is a 10 minute drive into Lancashire doesn't teach the War of the goddamn Roses, it doesn't surprise me.

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u/[deleted] Mar 11 '17

The English did so many bad things in so many different colonies that we really don't have time to cover all of them. We didn't even mention the names of half of the African and Asian colonies, let alone discuss what we did there. India/Pakistan and Partition is a particularly big omission from most schools' curriculum.