History: The Balm for All (Political) Ills
The Telegraph - Teach history, and good citizenship will follow
There is a simpler mechanism at hand. The teaching of history in our schools is, unaccountably, not compulsory after the age of 14. If it was, there would be no need for extra instruction in citizenship. It is through the teaching of history that citizens of this country learn about the society in which they are now living. It is arguable that, without the foundation of decent historical knowledge, citizenship lessons will in any event be built on sand.
Indeed.
January 26th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
There is a move on here to make History a compulsory subject, along with English and Mathematics. I would have hated it at the time, but in retrospect I can see the value.
January 26th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Yeah when the newlyweds were here she mentioned that. I went off on early Australian history and they were both sort of blank shrugs. And both of them have degrees and triple-majors and things. France doesn’t have that problem, you know, and France is nothing if not …French. No need to train them in that.
January 26th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Australian history is great, because it is not too cerebral and there is so little of it. An ideal school subject. There are too many Louis in French history.
January 27th, 2007 at 3:01 am
I
teachwork at a school that reminds the kids that history started on the Edmund Pettis Bridge. Does that bug me? Naw…. Except the skool is built on the same hill that in 1704 Moores people concentrated prior to destroying the church pictured some threads down. Hell, it’s got your Ang-Sax, your Hisbano, Injuns and Africans all in one story. But it doesn’t have a happy ending, so itain’t discussedignored. It’s just another case of failing to connect to the real past. It’s an annoyer of mine.January 27th, 2007 at 3:57 am
Half? Is that you?
January 27th, 2007 at 5:51 am
The way we teach history here is precisely what makes people hate the country –it’s just clay to be molded into any form. The explorers had no business coming here, and the rest is slavery, rape of the Indians, Viet Nam & Watergate. Washington was a filthy slave-owner, ditto Jefferson who raped his slaves to boot, and Lincoln was a filthy racist like everyone else. The only honest men the country has ever known are MLK, Malcom X & Alger Hiss. And Margaret Sanger & Rachel Carson. And Bill Clinton was the first black president.
What’s needed here is civics classes where everyone has to read the Declaration, The Constitution & the Federalist Papers, to understand the country’s institutions, their aims, and how they work.
January 27th, 2007 at 9:32 am
Ummm…. Brett, that was Shipman a crazed neighbor of mine, alwayser want to rant at me and lifter me up from my life of happiness.
And yeah what RC2 say.
January 27th, 2007 at 11:03 am
‘Cept schools aren’t good enough that anyone would have heard of Alger Hiss et al.
My cousins hated Canadian history. “It’s all beavers! ‘Ooh, beavers!’”
January 28th, 2007 at 4:29 am
I used to steal my sisters history books from the 3rd grade on. She whooped me pretty good a couple of times when I didn’t get it back into her book bag in time for next days lerning process.
January 29th, 2007 at 2:11 am
Sojourner Truth, anyone?
At least you guys aren’t stuck with Angevins and Plantagenets and such. And quite how, say, Walpole’s construction of his web of interest and obligation is supposed to grab the kids defeats me. Quite a lot of British history is really rather dull, frankly. But then again, if you just taught the interesting bits children would get a lot more out of it than they do now.
“French are made for kicking, Spaniards to bash We’ve never seen an alliance that we didn’t want to smash. We were born under a warlike star, a warlike, warlike star.”
January 29th, 2007 at 9:31 am
History is always interesting. They only teach the stuff that ended up mattering. It’s politics that’s boring.
January 29th, 2007 at 10:19 am
History is politics writ large. All gawds chillrun got politics, belief systems and fear.
And Ima steal that ditty. Is that from Bang Yur Flagon?
January 30th, 2007 at 1:39 am
Yup. Always liked that Jean Seberg.
So you’re not a fan of the “Annales” school? “La longue duree”? Can’t say I blame you, there’s only so much transhumance in the Mediterranean hinterland a bloke can take. Best headline of a history review ever, of a book by the tendentious Emmanuel le Roi Ladurie, in “The Spectator”: “Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel”.
January 30th, 2007 at 4:42 am
Took the words outta my mouth, Half. Me dear ol’ Da’ used to say History is someone else’s Current Events. ‘Cept the way they teach it here is not only insufferably deconstructionist and PC, but also written in simple declarative sentences that drain the life out of it (which is a blessing considering what’s being taught.) See McCarthy. See McCarthy torment Mr. Hiss. Bad McCarthy, Bad. See Congress. See Congress defund the war effort. Good Congress, Good. Bad Vietnam War, Bad!
January 30th, 2007 at 7:31 am
La longue duree”? Was that some sort of Franco-trickery prior to the launching of HMS Warrior?
January 30th, 2007 at 7:59 am
More along the lines of spending a couple of centuries being a miserable peasant, with people now and then coming up with new ways of storing cheese or wine. Glacial progress, if any, the peasant condition etc etc. I bought Fernand Braudel’s “Le Mediterranee” in about 1974 and I’ve still only ever used it to put down people with their holiday snaps from Espain. I’m like that.
I’m just reading Robert Dallek’s JFK biography (Kennedy not Kerry, I’d liked his LBJ book) and I’ve been really taken aback at the “see Nixon be nasty. Boo Nixon, boo! See JFK get us into Vietnam but he didn’t mean to so that’s OK! Boo Nixon boo!” way he writes.
I guess it must help him get tenure.
January 30th, 2007 at 9:54 am
:>
The world’s safest cheery. Boo Nixon, Boo Nixon.
(but thanks for ending the draft)