Teaching History

[poliphilo]

The teaching of history in schools is hugely controversial.  Rightwing people want it to be all about Nelson and Churchill. Leftwing people want it to be all about the slave trade and the chartists.  Apparently the current solution is to dodge aside from the fire fight and make it all about Hitler- because everyone can agree about the rights and wrongs of him.

Quite apart from the politics- or the lack of a "common culture" as Martin Kettle has it- there's the problem of just how much history there is to teach- 3,000 years of it and counting (that is if you don't include prehistory, which archaeology is making less and less opaque).  So your grandkids know lots about Martin Luther King and nothing about Martin Luther? Yup, that's bad- but would you really want it the other way round? And where are you going to find time in a highly pressurized curriculum to make sure they learn about both? 
 
Are there things that should absolutely be in the syllabus?  Probably. But I don't know what they are, because I can think of so many.

Comments

[calizen.livejournal.com]

You no doubt know about what the Texas schoolboard decided -- that they would forget everything but the bible-based teachings in their history curriculum, rename the slave trade as the Atlantic Triangle trade, emphasize law and order such as found in the Texas Rangers over immigration and immigration struggles. etc., etc.

I was taught that history is written by the victors. Only recently do we begin to know about the culture of the Mayans, the Aztecs, the Olmtecs here in America beyond the role of the Spanish conquistadores. And I do not remember learning any history of most of the world unless it somehow affected us -- or England, our mother country. So forget most of Asia except from World War II on.

I think there will always be a struggle over what gets taught, and it is of utmost importance because knowing one's history gives one a base to know who one is. But ah -- which history is it that we know?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've been reading about the Texas school board. The renaming of the slave trade is particularly shameful.

The tendency over here has been very much the other way. Rather than glory in national achievement we've been beating our breasts over everything we've done wrong. This too needs correction.

All history is tendentious, all history is an argument. I suspect the most and best a history teacher can do is get the child fired up about the past.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

I think the best thing schools should teach the next generation is an interest in all history, and all cultures, so that when they leave education they have at least an understanding that what they've learned is the tip of the iceberg and that there's a huge exciting world out there, featuring people whose lives and experiences have been mind-bogglingly different to our own. Sure, we need to learn about past mistakes, just so we can try and avoid repeating them, but there should be at least some positive aspects to the past.

There's books and television programmes aplenty which can enhance people's knowledge of a whole variety of historical periods, if they have at least some idea of time-depth and cultural variety. All they need to do is open their eyes and look around them!

It's worked with wildlife, hasn't it? Why can't the same mass appeal extend to archaeology & history?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I agree. The contents of the syllabus matter less than that it should be taught- whatever it is- with passion.

We don't need to get the whole of world history at school (even if it were possible). All it needs is for the interest to be set alight.

I'm a huge fan of Time Team, by the way. It had a lot to do with me going off and getting my archaeology "O" level.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

I'm not, I'm afraid! It's too staged and I find TR and his cohorts a bit annoying... Some of my colleagues have worked with the TT, mind, and really enjoyed the experience, so each to their own.

I do remember a really good series by the TT production team (pre-TT) for Channel 4 called 'Time Signs' which featured Mick Aston & Phil Harding. It followed a big archaeology job on the future site of a reservoir, going through the entire process of desk-based assessment, evaluation, standing building survey, excavation & post-ex. My mum taped it for me, bless her! It knocked TT into the shade and should be recommended viewing for anyone studying Archaeology or just interested in the subject. It was shown way back in the 90s at the same time the brilliant archaeology magazine programme Down to Earth was on. Ah, now I'm getting nostalgic!!

Oh, and the Time Team special on Stonehenge was really, really good. So I can't pull a sour face at everything they do!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've admired "little Tony" (as he's known in this house) ever since he did a retelling of the Odyssey on kids' TV back in the 80s. He'd written it himself, and the way he delivered it gave me goosebumps.

I guess Time Team is staged- but isn't everything on TV? We "starred" as ourselves in a short documentary once- and were directed as if we were actors. The number of times I carried that coffee cup into the living room!

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Ah, he'll always be Baldric to me.

And I mean cunning Baldric, from Blackadder I. Not stoopid Baldric...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I spotted him the other day in the old John Wayne movie McQ. He was very young back then. He plays a motorcycle courier whom Wayne pushes into the Thames.

Time Team, Blackadder and being roughed up by John Wayne- it's been an interesting and varied career.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

To say nothing of Codex! (Not perhaps the apex of his career, or mine.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

But great fun- at least it sounds like it was.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I've always been dubious about the National Curriculum, precisely because it means that everyone is ignorant about the same things. Thus, while no child leaves primary school without a bit of exposure to the Romans, Greeks, Tudors, Victorians and WWII, never a one of them will have been taught about, say, the Glorious Revolution, or anything that happened in the 50 years following it - a period of huge significance for the understanding of where the UK is today. In the old days, ignorance was spread more evenly, and thus we could compensate for each other's failings. Today, we all fall into the same pot-holes.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's a good point.

The Glorious Revolution has always been unfashionable. I can't think why. Maybe it's because you couldn't teach it without raising the uncomfortable (to the English) issue of the subjugation of Ireland.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

We are a young country, as so did not have the same problems with our country's history as do you folks. In grammar school they gave us a quick read on Marco Polo, the Vikings, then the Spanish explorers who sailed the world, then on to Christopher Columbus, Spanish settlements, French explorations, the Dutch, and finally the English - and on to 1776 and beyond. After Grammar school there was an option for kids who were on college prep track to study "Ancient History" and "Art Appreciation". World History, back then, was saved for freshman year in college (actually "The History of Western Civilization" which has since been renamed and reconstructed into "World History".) It would be difficult indeed for a country as old as England or Germany to cover it's entire history in the eight year period of grammar school, yet it is important for a people to know its country's story.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

When I was in school I studied the Tudors and Stuarts. It was mostly political history- and duller than it might have been, given the violence and glamour of the period. If I'd gone on to specialise in the subject I'd have found myself- in my senior year- looking at the era of the Industrial Revolution.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Here's a confession.

I didn't even DO history at school.

I did geography, and wound up stumbling into archaeology by accident, because of a TV programme (!). So the school curriculum had absolutely no bearing on my life whatsoever. I ditched history like a hot potato once we stopped learning about Greeks, Romans and Egyptians.

Oh, and incidentally, I have two extremely meaty academic books on the Glorious Revolution hanging around in my 'To Be Read' pile...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You didn't miss much. History as taught at "O" level was pretty boring.

We've got Simon Schama's book about the French revolution sitting on a shelf somewhere. I think it may be what I read next- if I can find it.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

You should read Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety for extra flavour. It's the best historical novel I've ever read and it reads the way I feel history ought to be: a bunch of blokes fumbling along doing stuff and playing routine politics, and - hey presto!- suddenly events have moved faster than they'd anticipated and the world has changed, carrying them along with it.

I thought it was brilliant and would recommend it to anyone.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I may try that.

I read Carlyle's French Revolution once- an absolute tour de force. Carlyle deserves to be rediscovered.

And I'm very fond of A Tale of Two Cities.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

Actually I got a lot of useful information from various historical novels. It's the "spoonful of sugar" that Mary Poppins talks about. These novels made me look deeper into th subject matter. Oh, yes, and also Good Old Willy's historic plays as well.

[algabal.livejournal.com]

We learned about Martin Luther King as early as kindergarten, where I found out what "assassinate" meant. Of course, during my long public school career we never touched on his rampant plagiarism or other personal flaws.

It's all hagiography. It's about politics and shaping what the federal government considers to be useful (i.e., complacent) citizens, nothing more.

Don't worry: whatever we teach them, they'll remember it this way....

[jorrocks-j.livejournal.com]

Simon de Montfort, though only a Frenchman, was thus a Good Thing, and is very notable as being the only good Baron in history. The other Barons were, of course, all wicked Barons. They had, however, many important duties under the Banorial system. These were:

1. To be armed to the teeth.

2. To extract from the Villein* Saccage and Soccage, tollage and tallage, pillage and ullage, and, in extreme cases, all other banorial amenities such as umbrage and porrage. (These may be collectively defined as the banorial rites of carnage and wreckage.)

3. To hasten the King's death, deposition, insanity, etc., and make quite sure that there were always at least three false claimants to the throne.

4. To resent the Attitude of the Church. (The Barons were secretly jealous of the Church, which they accused of encroaching on their rites - see p. 33, Age of Piety.)

5. To keep up the Middle Ages.

* Villein: medieval term for agricultural labourer, usually suffering from scurvy, Black Death, etc.

Re: Don't worry: whatever we teach them, they'll remember it this way....

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Many a true word is spoken in jest.

I learned my basic English history out of the kind of books that Sellar and Yeatman were satirizing. There's a lot to be said for them. They may have been hopelessly inadequate in many ways, but they gave you an overview- and you could fill in the details- from other sources- later.