"In my opinion, what changed the situation eventually - and, of course, it took a lot of time to change it, things like that don't change in a week or a fortnight - was the new educational system"
About this Quote
Hume is doing something quietly radical here: he’s downgrading the drama of “historic breakthroughs” and upgrading the slow mechanics of social change. The sentence is built like a peace process itself - careful, qualified, almost stubbornly incremental. “In my opinion” softens the claim, inviting consensus rather than picking a fight. Then he lingers on time: “a week or a fortnight” is deliberately homely phrasing, a colloquial yardstick that punctures the fantasy of overnight transformation. He’s not selling a miracle; he’s insisting on plumbing.
The real pivot is the phrase “the new educational system.” In Northern Ireland’s context, education isn’t a neutral public good. It’s a battleground over identity, memory, and belonging - and, crucially, a pipeline that determines who gets opportunity and who stays trapped in inherited grievance. Hume’s subtext is that peace isn’t primarily a handshake between leaders; it’s a generational reprogramming of what people expect from life and from each other.
There’s also a strategic humility to “changed the situation eventually.” He avoids naming villains or victories. That’s classic Hume: politics as de-escalation, language as a tool to lower the temperature. By locating change in institutions rather than personalities, he reframes conflict away from tribal moralism and toward solvable design problems. It’s a politician’s argument, but not a cheap one: if you want durable peace, you don’t just negotiate ceasefires. You redesign the classroom.
The real pivot is the phrase “the new educational system.” In Northern Ireland’s context, education isn’t a neutral public good. It’s a battleground over identity, memory, and belonging - and, crucially, a pipeline that determines who gets opportunity and who stays trapped in inherited grievance. Hume’s subtext is that peace isn’t primarily a handshake between leaders; it’s a generational reprogramming of what people expect from life and from each other.
There’s also a strategic humility to “changed the situation eventually.” He avoids naming villains or victories. That’s classic Hume: politics as de-escalation, language as a tool to lower the temperature. By locating change in institutions rather than personalities, he reframes conflict away from tribal moralism and toward solvable design problems. It’s a politician’s argument, but not a cheap one: if you want durable peace, you don’t just negotiate ceasefires. You redesign the classroom.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
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