Hamilton, the musical, is set to make its debut on the Junior Certificate English syllabus.
The Department of Education issued a circular last week with the latest prescribed material for the Junior Cert for students sitting the exam from 2024.
Classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Animal Farm by George Orwell have been rotated out of the syllabus for the next three years.
Hamilton is a sung-and-rapped-through musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda. It tells the story of Alexander Hamilton, an American founding father.
A number of new films are also included in the new syllabus for the Junior Cert English course including the animated Spiderman movie, Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse and the recent adaptation of Little Women by Greta Gerwig.
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Conor Murphy, chairman of Irish National Organisation for Teachers of English, said giving students the opportunity to study texts such as Hamilton shows them that plays can be “completely different” from Shakespearean dramas, which they also have to learn.
Murphy also said it was important to include musicals such as Hamilton as they brought much-needed diversity to the syllabus.
“They’re not white, they’re modern and they’re vibrant. But you’re not taking out the old classic stuff, because you want to teach that stuff too,” he said. “There’s so much background and teaching to be done with a Shakespeare play, there’s so many barriers to it. So it’s great to bring in something like Hamilton that they see as pure entertainment.”
Murphy said teachers could use modern movies and plays to show students that there is the same use of metaphors and imagery being used in Shakespearean dramas. He said this would make it easier for students to engage with classic texts.
Hamilton has been criticised for failing to include “real-life” black characters, including enslaved people, and also omits representation of indigenous Americans. Murphy said these sorts of debates would be something teachers would cover in their classes.
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“There might be some terms that might be uncomfortable. So you present them to the class in a very careful fashion. You point out the possible problems in the text, and you discuss those [with the class],” he said.