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findmypast - free access weekend
"Windmill" wrote in message ... "john james" writes: Windmill wrote Huge wrote The Other Mike wrote wrote Like many history as taught to me at school was presented so dryly and dour that I just shut down and got out of the subject as soon as possible. Ditto, and yet many decades later I often, but not always find it a fascinating subject. And another. How is it that such a fascinating subject is taught so badly? It would surely be inconvenient for those in power if everyone knew all the details, sometimes very nasty, of their predecessors' behaviour. That's not the reason in all but places like North Korea. It's just very difficult to do, particularly with school kids who don’t have the mental maturity to be able to enjoy something that complex. That might suggest that such behaviour goes with the territory. That is certainly true to some extent, but I'm not aware of any territory that does a very good job of teaching history to school kids in a way that sees many of the kids find it very enjoyable indeed in the way that you do get with other subjects. Even minor details - like Hemingway, an American, fighting in the Spanish Civil War, or Byron, a Brit, fighting in the Greek war - could resonate with current events in ways which might be deemed undesirable. That isn't the reason few school kids find it enjoyable, leaving out stuff like that and that stuff is a pimple on the bum of real history anyway. What matters much more is stuff like why WW1 happened, why the western europeans got into the situation where they got keen on invading almost all the entire world at one time, why the Chinese never did, why something like the Vikings happened, why something like Easter Island happened, why and how a tiny group of pacific islanders managed to spread out so effectively, why monarchies were so successful for so long and now aren't etc etc etc. I don't suppose that many in power actively try to discourage a knowledge of history, I don’t believe that any do in the current first and second world. There was a bit of that in the past, particularly with the Nazis etc, but we haven't seen any of that for quite a while now. but my suspicion is that there's a convenient neglect which mitigates against the kind of teaching capable of keeping kids interested. I haven't seen any evidence of that in say the last 50 years. They might prefer it if hoi polloi can be made less able to challenge their policies. I'm sure they do prefer that but there isn't any evidence that they are attempting to do that with history in schools. Is the teaching better where our future leaders are educated? Meaning of course Eton etc. etc. Worse in some ways, concentrating on the Greeks and Romans etc in the recent past. |
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