St David's Day

I let it slip past me.

I stayed up to all hours of the night last night helping my son with a "social justice" project in his social studies class. The project was educating people about the cultural authority and political power wielded by Disney. The project was great, and he received an excellent score, but it took all night to pull it off. That said, when I woke up this morning, I completely neglected the fact that it was St David's Day.

I wanted to celebrate St David's Say this year at my school. I didn't want to make too big of a deal out of it, I just wanted to do something to let my students know about St. David's Day and Wales. I thought of wearing one of my Welsh lapel pins - that would be easy. I even had the idea of convincing my wife to help me make little leeks and daffodils that my students could wear if they wanted. I think a lot of them would have taken me up on the offer. Participating in St David's Day was one of the most prevalent performances of Welshness mentioned by the participants in my study at a high school in Carmarthen, Wales. They spoke warmly of how they would "dress up" when they were younger, and even now (in year 12 and 13), the girls enjoy wearing daffodils and the boys (and girls) their rugby jerseys (not football - apparently Welsh footbal is "rubbish").

The students also spoke of eating cawl with big, great, globs of cheese in it and going to the assemblies in school where they would sing Welsh songs and listen to Welsh music. All of these are performances of Welshness and represent certain elements of the discourse of Welshness as it is understood by students who have attended schools in Wales for the majority of their academic careers. But is this totality of Welshness as it is represented in schools? If so, how does these interact with issues of power and identity at large in the UK? If there is more to the discourse of Welshness in Welsh schools, then what are those elements and why do they not come to mind as readily as leeks and dragons and rugby?