Under Orders

My response to a reply that teachers weren't under orders to force our children to wear 'The Welsh not', that they were themselves Welsh people happy to collaborate. The Welsh language was banned in schools in 1870 by an order of an Act of Parliament, after a government inspection of the state of education in Cymru/Wales by non-Welsh speaking school inspectors decided that our home tongue was a negative influence. The children were forced by government legislation to speak English; some were shamed into letting go of their birthright, some like O. M. Edwards refused to be humiliated, on the contrary it put their back up, and he personally worked all his life to further the language ironically becoming chief inspector of schools in Wales; his sentiments carried over to his son Sir Ifan ab Owen Edwards who founded 'Urdd Gobaith Cymru', an all Wales youth movement where children play & learn, in fact all activities, through the medium of Welsh. I began with the greatest of English ironies, I end with a Welsh one.