Public school history

Ive remembered a few other fragments - we did cover medieval field systems and a bit of feudalism at some point.

I was mainly thinking about how there has been no mention of the development of agriculture, and what a difference growing crops that could feed a lot more livestock over winter made.
 
sknox said:
Here in the US there is, or was, a standard offering of "World History" or "Western Civilization". The former was basically, let's include Asia, whereas the latter was Europe until the Age of Exploration when we include brief glimpses elsewhere.
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I was a high school history teacher before I became a Parson. And I can tell you that 40 (Parson considers today's date), no, 50 years ago World History was essentially European History. There was very little in the books that we were to use about Asia, and perhaps even more surprisingly, less about South America, in them and what was in them was almost totally related to things of interest/importance to the "Western" world, particularly the United States.

For example: there was a brief mention of the "banana republics" of South America with almost no mention of the role the USA played in the creation of these republics.
 
In the early '80s while we were covering WWI in grade 9 we had a Remembrance Day talk in the auditorium for the whole school and a veteran of that war had come to speak about it, plus we also got to watch a movie in one class, Galipoli, about the Australians. Very memorable.
 
As a kid we had a lot of school history books by R. J. Unstead. He was a standard in the UK as far as I know. They brought history to life. Strange to relate, just about everyone my age seems to remember a small illustration called "Trial by Ordeal".
Here is an image search of his books. I still have a couple on my shelves
1724451884170.png




In secondary school we had a great teacher who basically skipped all the Kings and Queens stuff and taught, instead, the history of things like The Canals, The Railways, The Tea trade, The agricultural revolution, Furniture design etc'.
He was fantastic. Mr Fitzgerald was his name, I write it here because there are so few opportunities to thank our old teachers.:cool:
 
Oh wow, I wish I'd had Mr Fitzgerald.

I can still see my last history teacher's face but not remember his name (youngish, brown hair, brown mustache) and he was very keen on political history and reform, with a bit on social history/disease.

The one before that, also can't remember his name, had fluffy curls and side whiskers, round glasses and blushed very easily - especially when having to show us censored photos of renaissance nude statues. I liked him better. In particular he did do a wonderful lesson, with the help of a colleague, on the power of observation and the variability of witnesses. He hadn't called the class to order, we were all talking, the second teacher came in, the two teachers talked for a minute, moved some books, did a couple of other things, colleague left then our teacher called us to order and then asked us all to write an account of what had just happened for the previous two minutes. Quite a variation, and some had been so busy talking that they'd noticed nothing. Then he expanded onto the concept of observation, observational bias, primary sources, secondary sources, and slanted accounts to push an agenda.
 
CupofJoe said:
No! Unless it involved a British General or Admiral trouncing Johnny Foreigner somehow. ;)
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Yes, same here. It was all about British (but more usually English) victories against the Scots, French, Germans and Spanish. Very little about defeats, and the loss of the American colonies.

But even today in Hollywood, how often do we get movies about Axis victories in WWI and WWII, or American defeats? How many British movies do we get about British defeats?

Obviously Hollywood is happy to portray the English as villains (Braveheart, The Patriot etc) and even misappropriates British achievements for American ones. But in how many Hollywood movies are the US seen as the bad guys, or defeated in battle? Even tragedies such as 'Pearl Harbour' have a positive spin on them, rousing Americans for a call to arms.
 
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I remember my primary school History being about Romans building roads, Vikings (with horned helmets), King Alfred burning cakes, the Fire of London, Stuarts and Tudors, Roundheads and Cavaliers - all of it pretty much untrue. There was no local history taught either then, or in junior school, and yet I was actually living in a place that had been one of the earliest and most urbanised of places, with the largest number of coal mines, and with the largest engineering and iron-making sites in the 1700's, and yet which had important and ground-breaking local history academic studies being published on it at that very time.

I was living in a housing estate with three housing estates being built around it. I could see urbanisation in action, and the loss of green fields and draining of ponds, and the change from heavy industry to services. At secondary school we superficially covered three crop rotation and revolutions in agriculture and industry, but there was still no local history, despite the importance of local engineers to locomotives, railways, bridges, roads, shipbuilding etc.. Like @Montero I studied O Level that was Social, Political and Economic History, 1815 to 1914. Like him we also didn't finish that course, and I also found it boring, learning by rote, and about subjects that had little relevance to the present day. Even in the 1960's and 1970's, the UK was still heavily influenced by WWII events and changes and yet we stopped at 1914. Now, WWII is probably covered too much by schools, as it happened quite a bit longer ago now, but some people seem obsessed with it.

The National Curriculum brought into schools in the 1990's standardised what was taught in UK schools. My daughter learned much about WWII, and as others have said, she also did topic based subjects like the Slave Trade, the Race for Africa and the History of Medicine. Yes, she was offered American History as an option. She also did some Local History. I was jealous at the time.

I don't know how history is taught at schools now because I'm no longer a school governor and my kids are all grown up, but I expect it is still with an English orientation. My ancestors are mostly Scottish. I did no Scottish History at school but learnt about it from going on holidays there. I have Huguenot ancestors. I didn't learn about the importance of immigrants like them to the rise of the UK economy. We didn't learn any Irish History. We covered little of the social history that is more popular today. I got interested in history through studying my family history. I then went on to do an Advanced Diploma in Local History from Oxford. I read widely in local history books and I am constantly amazed how the history of some urban communities has been largely ignored by big "History". At least the teaching of History has moved forward a little from when it was only about British Royalty, generals and admirals.

There is a UK citizen test for immigrants to pass. From what I have read of these questions (study books are available) they could not be answered by most UK born residents, and some questions are as pointless and trite as my primary school history was.
 
Interestingly the first thing I remember being taught in history was the slave trade, with the famous illustration of a ship's hold with the slaves being packed in like sardines. There was also the industrial revolution, but nothing about the wider picture. I think we did things like monasteries and castles when I was little, as class projects.

In the UK, you got bits of details without much context. There was Tudor England, the aftermath of the French Revolution (an odd one that), Nationalism in Victorian Italy, WW1 and Hitler's rise to power. There wasn't much to connect it all.

Victor Ambrus' illustrations are deeply linked with both history and fantasy that I read at school. I think he did pictures for King Arthur and Elidor.
 
I feel as though we are all piling on in regard to how poor the history we learned at school was both in terms of what we learned and what we did not learn. And as has been stated here there is a lot we didn't learn. But that's just the point, there is a lot of history to learn. And the unfortunate (some would probably say fortunate) is that there is only a very limited time to teach it. There have to be choices made and that means that some important stuff will not get taught. And especially it means that some of things that "I" find interesting will not get taught. I'm convinced that things I might find interesting most of the rest of the class is going to find deadly boring. I would suggest that for most teachers in most settings the most that can be reasonably expected is that most of the class will learn the general sweep of local, national, and international history. And then hope that some of the students will find their interest lit and proceed to learn more. I might even suggest that this whole discussion more or less proves that our teachers didn't do all that bad of a job of stimulating interest in history is some of their students.
 
Mine wasn't poor, but it was fragmented and very UK focussed. I think some of it, especially schools council, and learning how to be observant and the concept of primary and secondary sources was extremely important. What I learned was largely good, though not always to my immediate interest, but I do regret some of the gaps especially development of agriculture and the like.
 
Our teacher concentrated on the exciting bits, and we got to build castles from cardboard and Fairy Liquid bottles/toilet. He started my love of history, and I'm very grateful for it.

The only regret I had is that I didn't continue to take History (and English Literature) at a higher level of education. Instead I took subjects which (apparently) were more likely to get me a job; which I hated and therefore did poorly at.

I think that my love for English and History would have been a great combination, and meant I stayed in further education rather than walking away.
 
A couple of comments about the teaching of history. I taught at the college level for nearly 40 years. I chose not to teach high school because I did not want to teach people like me (I was a wretched student in public school). One pattern I noticed early on was the number of older folk--let's say 50 plus--who all had essentially the same story. They hated history in school (by which they meant public school), and were amazed to find how fascinating it was now that they were older.

A second thing I noticed was how very spotty was my own knowledge, once I started having to write my own lectures. I noticed as well how difficult it was to hit a subject cold. I knew little about Byzantine history, for example, especially once past Justinian. Reading my first survey book on the topic was hard work. A blizzard of names, all difficult to pronounce, conflicts and controversies that had no resonance and little context. Only determination kept me from abandoning it entirely. But when I came to it a second time, this time in the context of studying the Crusades, things started to come together..

I have come to conclude that one needs at least three passes over a time period before the noise starts to make sense. You know you've learned a subject area when you come across a new event or person and they just sort of snap into place. It's not more noise, it's completing a picture.

With all that said, I've concluded that teaching history in the public schools is not quite a fool's errand but is nearly so. I've heard enough stories to know that some youngsters get fascinated by a time period, but that's only the subject, not the craft. It sort of doesn't matter what's taught. Just tell stories, and some of them will connect and some young people will come out the other end with a genuine interest. They can go on to learn in depth, though it's really not until graduate school that one starts to learn the discipline along with the subject matter.

But I long ago stopped criticizing the students themselves, the schools, the administrators, or the government. Theirs is a losing proposition. Of course most people know little history, and of course most of what they believe comes from mass media. If they've heard the stories at all, they've heard them more often there than ever they did in a classroom. Plus, none of it has the resonance at seventeen than it's going to have at forty-seven. That's just how humans work.

Sometimes I think there should be a second round of compulsory education, coming in the later years, when we can better benefit from it.
 
I tried to go back into further education years after starting work. Even though I was peepared to pay, the number of 'adult' courses was extremely limited. If I wanted to do something more hands on it was fine, but 'A' level education in general studies such as English, Maths, History, Geography etc was non-existent.

Further education is wasted on the young.
 
I was fascinated by history while I was still in school, but not from any of my classes, from the historical novels I found in the school library. Those inspired me to seek out further (and more accurate) knowledge from the public library, and from there to assemble a small research library of my own So in a roundabout way I do owe my long-time interest in history to what I learned in school, just not from text books or in the classroom.
 
sknox said:
Sometimes I think there should be a second round of compulsory education, coming in the later years, when we can better benefit from it.
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I totally agree about the idea of life-long learning but not sure about the "compulsory" part. Surely, it is precisely because it was compulsory that the education was both poorer and disliked in the first place? Anything that people choose personally to do, as well as anything they have to pay for themselves, is going to be appreciated by them more?
paranoid marvin said:
If I wanted to do something more hands on it was fine, but 'A' level education in general studies such as English, Maths, History, Geography etc was non-existent.
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You didn't say when you thought this was true, and I agree that there is quite a lot of pottery and life drawing classes at the level of the local council run adult education colleges, and that the opportunity to retake 'A' level qualifications in later life is limited, but it isn't true today that you can't take courses in English Literature, Maths, History and Geography. You need to look at the major universities, to be prepared to pay, and also to do a lot of work online at home.

My course at Oxford was an Advanced Diploma (equivalent to a third year of a first degree) but you can do ordinary Diplomas and Foundation courses, Degrees and Further Degrees. You can do short courses with no qualifications, or you can obtain CAT points (Credit Accumulation and Transfer Scheme) for different courses from different universities and colleges that add up to a qualification. The Open University allows you to do this in a more structured way, where you can top things off with a summer school.

My caveats would be firstly that these are not very "general" courses, they are specific, so the Literature course would be a specific book in detail, the Geography course on a specific region. Secondly, if you want to pass exams or push yourself, you do need peer pressure from fellow students, so an online course must have some joint discussion elements or a summer school. I did an online course from a Higher Education College in website design about 20-years ago which was just working from a script at home and it was a very boring way to learn.

I regularly receive brochures of courses from my alma maters so I know that Oxford University Department for Continuing Education have hundreds of such courses, as do Imperial College Adult Education and Sheffield University Department of Lifelong Learning. Just do an online search on them.

The other thing I'd add, is that the academic standard of these courses are no less than for an 18-year-old, so for a mature student, juggling work, child-care or other caring, housework, relationships, etc. it is going to be tough. You will also need a decent laptop and they will demand certain software. I think a lot of people drop out. I know some did from my own course. I was only working part-time and I found it difficult. I did get a distinction though, so maybe I didn't need to push myself quite as hard as I did.

If you only want to watch University level courses in a lecture theatre without joining a course, then there is YouTube and Apple University. Alternatively, search online for Harvard University free courses for a list. There were some good English Civil War History lectures from Harvard that I watched 10-years ago.
 
You can sometimes find Open University TV programmes on UK TV, often late at night. They are very clear. I greatly enjoyed one years ago on Anglo Saxon agriculture and the very different approach to wheat, and harvesting it. Instead of looking for long straight stalks, and taking a scythe to the bottom of them, they grew wheat that had a weakness in the stalk just below the seed head, and harvested it with this big hopper on wheels, that had a serrated/zig zag front edge, and they pushed this thing up and down the rows, and the wheat head caught in the zig zag, snapped off, slid backwards into the hopper and bobs your uncle. Don't know if they left the stalks standing, maybe didn't use them for animal bedding or thatching - or indeed whether they'd then turn in the livestock to eat all the left overs.

I did an Open University Masters level course module on databases, once I moved from Chemistry to working in IT. That was hard work even after having done a degree and PhD, but I did fine in the exams. I was advised (and this was 2001) to do a lot more practice in handwriting, as the exam was handwritten and my hands were no longer used to writing for three hours.
 
Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I would just like to have been able to attend a classroom course that would have afgorded me an ppportunity to discuss and debate.

It's a real pity that 'documentaries' today are all show and no info, but there are a number from the past that trwat the viewer like an adult with an attention span of more than 30 seconds.
 
Universities usually have extension courses open to the general public. I attended a fairly long local University course on the Japanese language. You were paying the teacher and for the books and then some so it wasn't real low or no budget, but it was very high quality (I didn't, but you could sell your text books back to the campus bookstore afterward).

I've got an assortment of UK Open University books and vids related to history and enjoyed/enjoy them immensely! PBS stateside has really dwindled outside some regional programming, Nova, Frontline and Ken Burns & co., I hope they get a restored public budget in the future such as they ought to have had by this stage (if some extremists hadn't been successful in cutting it so often; some PBS stuff either borders on infomercial by necessity, or even is an outright infomercial). I miss the original U.S. TLC channel as it originally was... documentaries on classic fiction and authors, history that wasn't of the oft reheated WWII connected sort, and even that scary actual science stuff.

I've also found many BBC radio documentaries of great value on authors and musical artists

I still want to live a thousand years (at least) to read and learn everything! Perhaps they should find a way to teach self-learning more? A society of autodidacts sounds good to me, or at least the kinds who can suss out obvious garbage such as can be found on-line in vast amounts.

People are still fighting at community levels on what history to teach and how, and unfortunately the fanatics are often the most motivated. I expect a dozen or more years ago the prospect of book bannings would have seemed very rare occurances but now there is so much of that going on (the 'it can happen here' lesson). I followed a continuing story about how Hawaii has had some of it's past erased and restored and then erased again depending on the slants of whoever was placed in charge... thus even history is an ongoing and unfolding story.
 
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