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.