A big juicy education/political rant
Jun. 15th, 2006 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparkindarknessA brief political rant, if I may.
David Cameron, the schizophrenic leader of the Tories wants more history lessons for British pupils - apparently to connect us to British values (whatever they are) and British identity (whatever that is - It’s usually a code word for superior white people) presumable to encourage the young generation act like proper British nationals (we assume this will involve annexing India and going to war with France). At very least he thinks we should have compulsory history lessons to the age of 16 (GCSE level).
I disagree. Not, I might add, because history is not important - but because I DID take history to GCSE level. I got a shiny shiny A* in it as well, so I was good at it.. And what did my years of study gain me?
Lots of knowledge about the Spinning Jenny, James Watt and his steam engine, Stephenson and his trains. Power Looms and Flying Shuttles, Crop Rotation and animal husbandry, John McAdam’s roads and Brunel’s tracks. Puddling furnaces and ironmongers, trains, factories and new inventions, cottage industry falling towards urbanisation, coal mining and cotton mills.
Are we seeing a connection? Yes, year after year after bloody YEAR of the Industrial Revolution (with a nod to the agricultural revolution). I don’t think I ever studied a day of history that didn’t happen under Victoria’s rule - alright we did some pre-GCSE but the GCSEs themselves were entirely focused on the Industrial bloody Revolution - perhaps the single most BORING time of British history. No wars (WW1, WW2 and the civil war may as well not have happened) no empire (beyond a brief lick of colonial guilt), no Tudors, no Stewarts and certainly no world history. Our school trip wasn’t to Bosworth field or one of the castles - no, it was to Saltaire - a model village made in the Victorian era by a Victorian business owner for the workers in his Victorian mill.
And it’s all useless. Sure, kids need to know about the industrial revolution - but we needed to be taught “there were numerous inventions at this time that drastically increased production levels like the Spinning Jenny, the Power Loom and the Flying shuttle” then move on. NOT “this is the spinning Jenny, it did X, it was invented on X date, it worked by doing X, it was invented by X. Here is a drawing of it. Please waste an hour copying this drawing.” WE DIDN’T NEED TO KNOW WHO INVENTED THE BLOODY SPINNING JENNY! When it comes to top ten most useless pieces of knowledge you could ever know then the inventor of the spinning jenny has to be up there. It’s the kind of obscure knowledge that history professors who specialise in the Industrial revolution know (and they have to wear warnings signs to let everyone know that they are a terminally boring person) it is not something you need to force 15 year olds to memorise and then test them on it!
Forcing kids to study history until they are 16 will achieve nothing but make them hate history if you spend those extra 2 years ramming the industrial revolution down their throats. And it’s not the teachers’ fault - the teachers’ wanted to teach history but the test was entirely Industrial Revolution. They would have actually harmed our grades if they had covered the Magna Carta or Cromwell or the Peasants revolt or the Black Death (Huge, MAJOR social changes in the country).
So, to conclude, don’t force kids to learn more history - teach them BETTER history.
David Cameron, the schizophrenic leader of the Tories wants more history lessons for British pupils - apparently to connect us to British values (whatever they are) and British identity (whatever that is - It’s usually a code word for superior white people) presumable to encourage the young generation act like proper British nationals (we assume this will involve annexing India and going to war with France). At very least he thinks we should have compulsory history lessons to the age of 16 (GCSE level).
I disagree. Not, I might add, because history is not important - but because I DID take history to GCSE level. I got a shiny shiny A* in it as well, so I was good at it.. And what did my years of study gain me?
Lots of knowledge about the Spinning Jenny, James Watt and his steam engine, Stephenson and his trains. Power Looms and Flying Shuttles, Crop Rotation and animal husbandry, John McAdam’s roads and Brunel’s tracks. Puddling furnaces and ironmongers, trains, factories and new inventions, cottage industry falling towards urbanisation, coal mining and cotton mills.
Are we seeing a connection? Yes, year after year after bloody YEAR of the Industrial Revolution (with a nod to the agricultural revolution). I don’t think I ever studied a day of history that didn’t happen under Victoria’s rule - alright we did some pre-GCSE but the GCSEs themselves were entirely focused on the Industrial bloody Revolution - perhaps the single most BORING time of British history. No wars (WW1, WW2 and the civil war may as well not have happened) no empire (beyond a brief lick of colonial guilt), no Tudors, no Stewarts and certainly no world history. Our school trip wasn’t to Bosworth field or one of the castles - no, it was to Saltaire - a model village made in the Victorian era by a Victorian business owner for the workers in his Victorian mill.
And it’s all useless. Sure, kids need to know about the industrial revolution - but we needed to be taught “there were numerous inventions at this time that drastically increased production levels like the Spinning Jenny, the Power Loom and the Flying shuttle” then move on. NOT “this is the spinning Jenny, it did X, it was invented on X date, it worked by doing X, it was invented by X. Here is a drawing of it. Please waste an hour copying this drawing.” WE DIDN’T NEED TO KNOW WHO INVENTED THE BLOODY SPINNING JENNY! When it comes to top ten most useless pieces of knowledge you could ever know then the inventor of the spinning jenny has to be up there. It’s the kind of obscure knowledge that history professors who specialise in the Industrial revolution know (and they have to wear warnings signs to let everyone know that they are a terminally boring person) it is not something you need to force 15 year olds to memorise and then test them on it!
Forcing kids to study history until they are 16 will achieve nothing but make them hate history if you spend those extra 2 years ramming the industrial revolution down their throats. And it’s not the teachers’ fault - the teachers’ wanted to teach history but the test was entirely Industrial Revolution. They would have actually harmed our grades if they had covered the Magna Carta or Cromwell or the Peasants revolt or the Black Death (Huge, MAJOR social changes in the country).
So, to conclude, don’t force kids to learn more history - teach them BETTER history.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 09:35 am (UTC)WWI. WWI. More WWI. Details analysis of trench foot, trench warfare, mustard gas, etc. Then onto, well, WWII. WWII and, oh, WWII. I can still vaguely remember the dates the different contries joined the war. And the reasons. And the... Well, you get the idea.
Britain? Most we got on Britain was on the propaganda...
Nothing interesting like the anglo-saxons, or medieval times, or anything like that... :/ We got no industrial revolution, no Victoriana, a bit on the time women gained the vote, maybe...
But yeah. World War after bloody World War here... That was '99... *hides from her age*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 11:05 am (UTC)But why do they always focus on one issue?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 12:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 01:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 02:04 pm (UTC)And that's a lot easier if it's all connected and promotes skills in Joined Up Thinking and Essays and Using Evidence... (All of which, as a lawyer, I'm sure you can appreciate... Damned if anyone else can!)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 09:43 am (UTC)Way to turn another generation of Scots into raving anti-English supporters!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 11:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 12:15 pm (UTC)PS Go Trinitad and Tobago!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 12:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 01:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 09:57 am (UTC)Oh, that was indeed a happy moment.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 11:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 11:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 01:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 02:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 10:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 11:07 am (UTC)I don't necessarily agree with the focus entirely being medicine - but the scope and breadth of it is what we should be teaching
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 10:08 am (UTC)I'm an Australian. Do you know how boring Australian history is? Very boring. The subject area, "Australian History" does hold promise, until you realise that the big entertainment of the whole course is someone reading "Well may we say God Save the Queen, for nothing can save the Govener General" in a funny voice. People plead that covering 3 major wars of the 20th century must have been interesting "Unlike in England, we didn't have rationing".
Mandatory history is a cruel, cruel thing. I learnt what real history I know from imported BBC documentaries and elective history. Elective history was assessed internally, and came with snappy titles (Mysteries & Mummies, Knights & Castles, Conflict & Terrorism, Civil War & Dictators, Ancient & Modern Worlds).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 11:09 am (UTC)Yep, all the REAL history i nknow is from reading and documentries.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-03 10:14 am (UTC).... wait for it ....
.... Victorian England.
Except we didn't focus on the Industrial Revolution. We focussed on the overcrowded prison ships and Transportation to Australia for Stealing a Loaf Of Bread.
Yes, I came out of school thinking that the silly Americans revolted so England couldn't send convicts to the Americas anymore (!) so they sent them to Australia instead.
How .. interesting.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-03 12:55 pm (UTC)"At least you did something other than The Explorers!"
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-03 01:49 pm (UTC)Everyone knows that the empire was really ethnic cleansing. We sent our religious nuts to America, criminals to Australia and lunatic aristocracy to India. The rest we sent to Africa to keep them amused.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 10:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 11:10 am (UTC)We never did any world history
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 12:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 10:23 am (UTC)And I have to say that I've studied Rome half to death. And Greece. And the colonization of America and the Revolutionary war. But then it was like this breif "oh yes, then there was this, this, this, this, this and this and now we're to today!" thing from there on out, as though nothing that happened since really mattered.
Apparently history teachers the world over suck.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 01:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 07:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 03:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 05:12 pm (UTC)Not surprisingly, when it came time to take the AP exam at the end of the year my classmates were somewhat deficient in their knowledge of the rest of US history, and out of two sections of the class only three people managed to get college credit. Two of them had tranferred in from other school districts the year before, and all three of them were despised by the teacher for their annoying penchant for independent thought.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 07:03 pm (UTC)Don't get me wrong he was a great general but so was Sun Tzu, Rommel and Montgomery and a host of others
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 07:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 11:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 01:20 pm (UTC)Still, it is vastly more important than the Spinning bloody Jenny
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 12:00 pm (UTC)I loved history and did it to A-level, but we spent the whole of Year 9 on the industrial revolution and that would have been enough to convince me to drop it like a hot potato had I not known what the GCSE syllabus was. WWI, WW2, and the Cold War in the first year. America in the US Interwar Years (the League of Nations, prohibition, FDR, etc.), the Weimar Republic, and the Vietnam War in the second year. A-level was the Tudors, and the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Europe in the 16th Century, but, our entire coursework consisted of a personal study that we could choose ourselves, and, after giving me some weird looks and trying to talk me out of it, they let me write 4000 words on "Were the years between 1848 and 1952 a golden age for public medicine?" John Snow and the pump handle, the first Board of Public Health, trench medicine, the formation of the NHS, and so on. I was a giant history nerd, but we got a good syllabus. I hated the Spinning Jenny. I might have found a Spinning Jenny to throw through a handy window if they had made me do it for any longer than I already had to.
Plus, I then went off and got a degree in biomedical sciences, so I seem to have become saturated at some point.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 02:07 pm (UTC)I loved history - I just wish we could study more of it. I would have been happier studying such a range and would ahve loved to study more European history.
An odd essay but probably one where there was a lot of info and an important cornerstone to future European government and attidtudes.
I wanted a replica spinning jenny. So i could throw it out of a window
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 12:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 02:07 pm (UTC)warwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarpeacewarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwar
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 04:50 pm (UTC)People seem to forget the horrors of war. But sometimes the war kills enough of them in a horrible enough way it no longer appeals.
The US hasn't really had a war on it's soil. A couple of Japanese bombs on the mainland and some from terrorist didn't really do harm.
Have you read Guns, Germs and Steel? I need to pick up that book.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-03 01:47 pm (UTC)See methinks this is one of the reasons why America can still glorify war but Europeans don't - your last war on your soil was too long ago. Europeans can still remember the ick of war on your doorstep.
Maybe we will forget again one day. I hope not
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-03 03:50 pm (UTC)Older Germans were horrified that their children did not know what happened in WWII. They had to start teaching of it's horrors in school. They had done too good a job at suppressing information on Nazism and what it did before, during and after the war.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 04:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 07:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 05:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 07:06 pm (UTC)Hoiw and why you need a spinning bloody jenny
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 11:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-03 01:46 pm (UTC)Aie, it's so simplistic!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-16 08:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-03 01:44 pm (UTC)