Connect: In 1966 a Christian Brother pinned a facsimile copy of the Proclamation to the wall above the blackboard. Prints of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising festooned the side walls of the classroom. Insurrection was running nightly on five-year-old Teilifís Éireann. Commemorative coins and stamps of the Rising were issued and the pageant Mise Éire was screened live from Croke Park.
Veterans of 1916 were honoured amid a military march on Dublin's O'Connell Street and a 21-gun salute by soldiers on the GPO roof. It was a time of homage. Many teenage girls, for instance, treated posters of the Proclamation's signatories like those of pop stars. Daft as it sounds, the Beatles, the Stones and the Kinks vied with Pádraig Pearse, James Connolly and the rest.
Ireland was a very different country 40 years ago. There was no free secondary education. Jack Lynch defeated George Colley to take over as taoiseach from Seán Lemass. Eamon de Valera beat Tom O'Higgins to become president for a second seven-year term. Arkle won his third successive Cheltenham Gold Cup and England had a football team good enough to win the World Cup.
Much of the 1966 commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising was designed to bolster the origin myth of the Irish State. That myth emphasised "blood sacrifice", gallantry against superior forces, religious - specifically Catholic - commitment, and the fact that a revolution of poets is, after all, more romantic than a revolution of say, van-drivers, teachers, doctors or journalists.
Yet just three (Pearse, Tomás MacDonagh and Joseph Plunkett) of the seven signatories could be considered "poets". More of them, in fact, published prose. Still, all states romanticise their origins and in that sense, the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising was unexceptional.
Now, with Fianna Fáil determined to out-republican Sinn Féin, this year's 90th anniversary is controversial.
It's controversial principally because of the outbreak of violence in the North three years after the 50th anniversary of the Rising. That conflict continued for more than a quarter of a century. It's controversial too because militarised commemorations appear dated, absurdly solemn and even obscene to many people. But state power - especially nowadays - centres on the control of weapons.
Even in the US, where electors are relentlessly propagandised by big business to seek small government and a huge private sector, the state retains control of big-time arms and munitions. Indeed since the Reformation, which strengthened states at the expense of religious - specifically Vatican - power, control of weapons has become a defining mark of state power.
Consider that during the sex abuse scandals of the past decade or so, some Irish Catholic bishops saw their primary allegiance to canon rather than State law. In that sense, then, Protestantism aids a state by allocating more powers to it. But in the Free State which was the result of 1916 and the War of Independence, colonisation by London gave way to colonisation by Rome.
So we got the darkest days of the Catholic Tiger. Yet through the long haul of the early decades of industrial schools, orphanages and Magdalene laundries, the early generations - front-line troops - clung to the ideal of a free Ireland. They were not free, of course, from severe Catholic strictures any more than current generations are free from domination by American-led globalisation.
Anyway, haven't we "moved on" from all of that? Well, time has passed and Ireland 2006 has changed, although it hasn't changed utterly. It's a regular criticism now that the leaders of the Rising were unelected and had no democratic mandate. Then again, the monarch of Britain and assorted family members are always unelected and never have a democratic mandate either.
The 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising is a sensitive issue. There's legitimate pride at winning control of 80 per cent of the island but triumphalism is seldom pretty. It's sometimes argued - at times persuasively - that Orange marches are really about nothing other than triumphalism. However, if they are, is it right then to incorporate elements that automatically rankle? It's certainly human to do so and at root it all has to do with notions of identity. That's why people should tread as gently as possible. It's not easy, of course, particularly if you believe that it's your turn for a spot of triumphalism. So, should this Republic hold a military march to commemorate the Easter Rising of 1916? Given that all other states remember their independence, it appears a reasonable thing to do. Nonetheless, there are degrees of triumphalism which, even if you've been subjected to comparable barbarism, are likely to corrode the celebrator as much as his or her enemies.
That's the risk - you want to celebrate your own identity but realise that excess harms rather than complements it.
The aim therefore is neither to swagger nor to be a doormat. Calling 1916 or Orange marches "cultural events" is disingenuous. Does politics enclose culture or vice versa? We know from the North that such "cultural" events are excuses to make political points about people whose status has been historically second class. The Proclamation's anti-sectarianism is worth celebrating.