It seems that the British Isles is a thing of the past, in Ireland anyway.
New and revised Folens school books will no longer refer to Ireland, Britain and our smaller islands as the British Isles.
Folens atlas used the term "British Isles" on every page of their 31 page book. The labelling "British Isles" was apparently used only as a geographical term to illustrate Ireland's close proximity to the island of Britain.
The use of the term "British Isles" has offended some Irish people and a complaint was made by a single parent to Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin. The minister's private sectary issued a response on the ministers behalf advising the aggrieved parent to take the issue up with the teacher that used the Folens Atlas for tuition and the board of that particular school. The response pointed out that it is not the policy of the Minister for Education to involve herself in vetting published materials produced by commercial companies (even in relation to companies who publish for Irish schools? Okay Mary, they don’t have to listen to you but they will if they want to sell their books to our students! I digress…)
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern has stated that the term 'British Isles' is not used by the Irish Government and is without any official status. The Irish Embassy in London has been urged to monitor media in Britain for "any abuse of the official terms as set out in the Constitution of Ireland and in legislation". (hmm, looks like our government officials can get involved when they want to.)
In a separate incident John O'Connor of Folens had the same issue presented to him by a geography teacher; Mr. O'Connor had this to say; "I have a policy that if I see a potential problem I'll act on it immediately instead of waiting to see if a problem arises. So from January 2007 the reference will be removed."
Your Opinion:
So, what do you think? Does it really matter if our geographical location is referred to as the "British Isles"?
Editor
Our Ireland
2 Comments:
It's no worse than Canada an Mexico being part of the Americas; nobody suggests that either country is under US rule. But you should take a look at the Wikipedia discussion page on this one (look also under the Ireland page). It seems that some people have serious time and energy to be offended by the use of the term.
I agree, a lot of people are just looking to be offended by something. Is this one of those things? Is it important what a nation is referred to even is it is inaccurate?
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