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

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.