Welsh Journals

The Whole Man is rarely Remembered JAC L WILLIAMS PRAISING THE INFLUENCE of Sir 0 M Edwards was placed in the 'Outs' column in the February issue of Wales in the very year in which the nation is celebrating the centenary of the birth of that great patriot. It may be that no one is expected to take the 'Fun and Games Dept' of Wales seriously, but it can be argued that it is time for the Welsh nation to take a fresh look at Owen Morgan Edwards. A nation's memory is as liable to indulge in the patch method of looking at history as a school syllabus. The '0 M' that has been kept alive in the national memory is the sensitive child who endured the Welsh Not at Llanuwchllyn in the 1860s, and who, in his adult life, presented a romantic picture of the history of Wales, revelled in nursery rhymes, looked at nature with a child's sense of wonder, worshipped God in a simple manner, was free from all sins of the flesh, and succeeded in removing the 'ysgol y Llan' type of school from the Welsh educational pattern. The attention given to the Welsh Not episode has led to the establish- ment of Welsh-medium education at primary school level for Welsh- speaking children almost everywhere, but emphasis on mother tongue education has also been responsible for the development of a language policy that withholds contact with the second language from children at the infant school stage, when it would be comparatively easy for the majority of them to acquire fluency in a new language. Remembering Owen Morgan Edwards in his entirety and to the extent of accepting all aspects of his leadership may be rather a heavy burden for a nation that is by nature somewhat sentimental, rather reluctant to look objectively at its past, sadly lacking faith in its own language, and slow to realise that it should be at least as capable of standing on its own feet as other nations that have but a small pro- portion of its economic and intellectual resources. It is time the nation realised and appreciated how much time and energy Owen Morgan Edwards devoted to the service of Wales and