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history and leaving school !!!!!
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Message 1.Â
Posted by thelastminority (U14702061) on Tuesday, 21st December 2010
Essentially, i left school with the usual (as far as i know) features of a typical History syllabus (give or take WWII etc). 1066 to 1603, with a few charitable wildcat lessons on Roman stuff. Mental. The Kings & Queens of England, their Govement and their foreign policy (and some Euro comparative and their foreign policy etc 1066-1603).
Ever since, with every history book i read, with every passing year, or every now and again, i am reminded how little i was taught at school, and how much everything i have read since then, has been by comparison, meaningful, compelling and Relevant !!!
i feel very angry, how/why are we thrown into adult life, aged 16 or 18, with such a lack of knowledge about the constitution, key features of the nation and civilisation of today, and the context to that, the background to today! is beyond me. I'm stunned, stuffed if you will.
Rudimentary idea of political spectrum left, right and Syntheis. Some idea of economic history 1700-today (give or take). social history (boring yawn), demographics. critical analysis !!!
The only arguements i've heard so far is that calculus, and quadratic equations are after fractions, in arithmetic.
And i am Not Convinced, AT ALL !!!
all comments very welcome,
with Seasons/Solstice Compliments -
Message 2
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Wednesday, 22nd December 2010
Doesn’t seem quite fair to blame your schooling for your broadening (or narrowing) interests since then, TLM. Your interests don’t necessarily fit with everyone else’s interests after all – I for instance feel a greater emphasis on social history would have been of benefit when I was at school, but we got none of it really. Our history seemed to concentrate on the constitutional history of England and later Britain. And though that must have left many gaps my knowledge of English history has been built on that grounding, in a way I have not been able to do with Scottish history, which was barely touched on and which I would like to have a more sure sense of. I suspect what you got at school has helped you retain and grow your history interest.
I have a great lack in my knowledge of WWII (despite my father being part of it), but it’s not the school’s fault. I only took History for one year; you, I presume took history for a much longer time, but there is still a limit to how much can be got through in a school year and in how much depth you can do it at that level.
We have a new curriculum in New Zealand and apparently teachers have quite a wide range of what topics they can teach. The broad focus is (there doesn’t seem to be separate history, though I think there is in practice): In the social sciences, students explore how societies work and how they themselves can participate and take action as critical, informed, and responsible citizens.
One knowledge strand is to understand that events have causes and effects. The students are to take an event affecting New Zealand and use that as an example. The teacher I spoke to said the most popular topic for that was the 1981 Springbok Tour, but they could use Women Getting the Vote, the Treaty of Waitangi, something about WWII, or something as recent as the Rainbow Warrior bombing in 1985, and even events of the 1990s. Perhaps my husband’s favourite topic when he was a teacher, the unification of Italy, would fit the overall strand though not the New Zealand-oriented part of it.
But whatever they use won’t suit every student’s interests and certainly not their life-long interests which will change as they get older and learn more.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 3
Posted by thelastminority (U14702061) on Wednesday, 22nd December 2010
a scouts reply, as far i can make out ?!!
why defend the education system? (is this an age thing or personal perhaps?!!)
you said everyone does the same sort of thing more or less.
the history of the Government and its foreign policy.
or The Kings & Queens of England and their foreign policy.
i did GCSE followed by A-levels in England. and of course we build up a set of knowledge etc etc (not taken for granted)
all i'm saying is, the history we covered dunt exactly prepare us for adult life.
Seriously so what about Thomas Cranmer (Gov official). H.VIII gets through six wives. English history sure, but seriously, so what. Did that and the dissolution of the monasteries have to take two entire terms and so what anyway. The King gets a vast pool of cash, and then wastes most of it ! The Earl of warwick the bloomin King-Maker. Some county is in charge and then after a bit a different county. Good stuff for a 16 year old. But then what??! The Armada ?? does it have to take up so much time, leaving us with no knowledge of subsequent and far more recent and arguably more relevant history??? (how about a compulsory reading list! and yes an exam answer/ short essay/bit of course work, will suffice!?)
i feel better but still angry !!!!! -
Message 4
Posted by Mr_Edwards (U3815709) on Wednesday, 22nd December 2010
In a way, you're right to be angry. Regardless of what is taught in schools, it has, in my experience been taught very badly indeed.
I think the issue is, "history" lessons are not teaching history at all but a narrative of some kind designed to give us a sense of belonging or something.
Take the Tudors. In my school I don't even remember studying Henry VII. It seemed to be Henry VIII and his six wives, then Mary and Elizabeth. Nothing of Edward VI or the politics that brought Lady Jane Grey to the throne.
And then, as you say, Henry's dissolution of the Monasteries and the break with Rome perhaps with some superficial mention of the Reformation that doesn't even mention Calvin or Zwingli (although Calvin gets a mention in relation to John Knox, who was important because of something to do with Mary Queen of Scots or something).
As you say, superficial and trivial.
These days, apaprently, children are taught to evaluate sources of information, with the differences between primary and secondary sources and consideration of the writer's agenda. A useful tool certainly but so much gets out.
I've said on another thread that I would prefer a backward history beginning with the child himself and what is personal to the kid, and then expand from there to find what made this class as it is today.
It certainly makes more sense than beginning with Ugg the Caveman, knapping a stone for ten thousand years, pausing only to build Stonehenge before thew Romans arrived etc. etc. -
Message 5
Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Wednesday, 22nd December 2010
I went to school in the 'fifties and was taught history at GCSE level.
I don't believe I was taught enough history, but what I was taught, left me wanting more. Our education system at that time was preoccupied with feeding pupils other, more mundane subjects, such as RE and art, which between them took up a fifth of classroom time. The more important lessons like history, geography, English and maths, seemed to suffer as a result.
However, if pupils were sufficiently interested in a subject, they could always educate themselves through our extensive library services, as I did.
God only knows what history is taught in our schools today, but when, as a test, I asked a group of sixth formers I know a few basic history questions. I was alarmed to find out that they knew more about Middle Eastern history than our own. For instance; they knew about Yasser Arafat, but thought that Winston Churchill was a dog selling insurance. Francis Drake was a highwayman, Horatio Nelson was a pirate...etc etc...the mind boggles.
I had a light-hearted book published a couple of years ago about famous british personalities and events, with a different slant on how things might have happened. The youngsters who read it were amazed how diverse our history really is, and I hope that it got them as interested as I was.
Rooster -
Message 6
Posted by thelastminority (U14702061) on Wednesday, 22nd December 2010
Mr Edwards,
I'm tempted to profer the idea that John Knox and Mary Queen of Scots, means ultimately a commentray about divine right of Kings, and therefore Mary's son James, and his son Charles I - and the Civil War, and all that follows !
And that is ye proverbing nail in Norfolk coffin so to speak (for me).
Lady Jane, Mary the Queen etc but so what, until you get John Knox thrown in? The kind of stuff he was writing changes everything. From an exciting adventure story about treachery, dark plots and whom would be King, we have what working organisations should be established, and thereby how decisions are made and enacted (enforced), that of course, effect people and their lives. which is nout more important on occasion?!!
The idea of the House of Lords, has passed into history, only very recently. The idea of a Life peer was only invented in the 50s !!! The industrial revolution seems to have begun at least in a recognisable and meaningful form about 1780. Decline compared to competing nation states, in industry and manufacturing began about 1920 and has continued to this day. Having said that I read recently that the north south divide (hate the term, not being big on class), was evident in the early 1700s !!!!! (Humber to the Severn).
Are we bored to death by all this, in our precious skate-board years?
(not sure i really care?) -
Message 7
Posted by thelastminority (U14702061) on Wednesday, 22nd December 2010
Sleepyrooster,
they knew about Yasser Arafat, but thought that Winston Churchill was a dog selling insurance. Francis Drake was a highwayman, Horatio Nelson was a pirate...etc etc...the mind boggles. Â
A version of the Battle of the Nile (like the one in: A Brief of History of Fighting Ships), as compulsory reading, might change things (for the better, dare i say it) ??! -
Message 8
Posted by Mr_Edwards (U3815709) on Wednesday, 22nd December 2010
Knox does indeed show the link to the Divine Right of Kings and the conflict between the Stuarts and the people... but context is essential - and we didn't get the context.
Henry VIII broke from Rome... but so did John, for example. In fact John even wrote to the Caliph of Cordoba offering to convert England to Islam in return for support against the French (the Caliph said he wasn't interested). What made Henry's tiff with the Pope more far-reaching than John's was the context of what was going on in Germany and what would later become Switzerland and the Netherlands. Where previous rulers had broken ties with Rome, Luther gave Henry a hook on which to hang his withdrawal to make it seem ideological rather than personal, and so making England (with a slight hiccup in the reign of Mary 1) begin to be, along with Sweden, one of the chief protectors of Protestantism in Europe.
I think it was even worse at Primary School. We jumped from the reign of Good Queen Bess with a brief look at the Gunpowder Plot, to the Plague epidemic of 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666. Then from there, we went on (via a brief mention of losing the American Colonies and discovering Australia) to the war against Napoleon Bonaparte. No mention of anything controversial like the Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, or even the Industrial revolution. -
Message 9
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Wednesday, 22nd December 2010
For GCE "O" level (that reveals my age, I suppose) we took "Modern" history from Bosworth to the death of Victoria. I can still remember the Repeal of the Corn Laws, and the Speenhamland System, or as we now know them "EU Agricultural Subsidy System" and "Working Tax Credits" (that's why I expect both to fail eventually). Nowadays it seems to be history of slavery and WWII to the near-total exclusion of everything else.
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Message 10
Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Wednesday, 22nd December 2010
Minority and Urnungal
Yes, I agree with you both.
The concensus among our education authorities seems to be that world history takes precedent over British history. Surely this is the wrong way round!
I'm sure that in Russian, American and China etc. schools put more emphasis on teaching children about their own heritage rather than that of foreign countries. Is it just another string to the PC brigade's bow? Or are the powers that be ashamed of our history. I for one think that there were more positives earned in our past than negatives, but I know that the psuedo-anarchists in this country would disagree.
Rooster -
Message 11
Posted by thelastminority (U14702061) on Wednesday, 22nd December 2010
Mr Edwards,
quite. ver interetsing.
i had to cover the Gunpowder Plot via the illustrated Heritage of Britain (charity shop purchase), worse luck.
but we did cover the exchequer board in junior 4, (primary school),
otherwise it was all a bit meandering, as far i remember ?!! -
Message 12
Posted by thelastminority (U14702061) on Wednesday, 22nd December 2010
Is it just another string to the PC brigade's bow? Or are the powers that be ashamed of our history. I for one think that there were more positives earned in our past than negatives, but I know that the psuedo-anarchists in this country would disagree.Â
mmmm, positive negative as opposed to negative positive........
(although i was never very good at physics !!!!!) -
Message 13
Posted by dmatt47 (U13073434) on Wednesday, 22nd December 2010
History teaching has changed, it used to be just about dates and now people don't know dates. We started learning about the Bronze Age and went though to the 20th Century before going to Secondary School, very little teaching about anything but British history without a few Scottish Kings and spiders. The information even in books was often wrong, Joan of Arc was not burnt as a witch!. Often bigger historical concepts were for the Sixth Form. History was not important like maths and English and would not be used as much in work.
The Â鶹ԼÅÄ is pretty good for history as are the various history channels and I wonder whether a series like The World at War would be made today. -
Message 14
Posted by sagethyme (U5272261) on Wednesday, 22nd December 2010
Whenever I see a thread like this on any subject, arts or sciences, I feel grateful for my excellent school in the 1960s.
We certainly received a decent grounding in British History (mostly English to be honest) from the Romans to mid-19th century. We included currently unfashionable eras such as the 14th and 15th centuries.
A smattering of Stone Age and Greeks, not enough about the Victorians and later. Also not much on other countries except when at war with them, but the Geography teacher filled in some of that. A good framework for later study for those of us interested.
I just looked at my O-level papers to check that my memory is not rose-tinted. They are now of historical interest to be sure....
My son recently did an excellent GCSE on Medical History through the Ages. This seemed a good overview and more useful and interesting than their other topics of Jack the Ripper and Hitler. -
Message 15
Posted by thelastminority (U14702061) on Wednesday, 22nd December 2010
dm,
i understand the argument about lack of dates and a solid base of knowledge. And I expect we all did a certain amount of reckoning with the differences between primary sources and secondary sources, and some of the key possibilities and ways of understanding, making sense of, and evaluating. A-level was however, for me, just the same as GCSE, though with an emphasis on essay critical analysis. Mental. -
Message 16
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Wednesday, 22nd December 2010
History certainly seems to be taught very differently now than it was when I was at school.
In the 1940s at Junior School we certainly were taught something about the Romans and I knew about Alfred and the cakes, Canute and the tide, and the Norman Conquest before I was 10. At that age I bought a fascinating Penguin book which contained photos of the entire Bayeux tapestry. But then I was interested in history - it was all just stories, after all.
They sold paperback books on the local market - 'Prehistoric & Roman Britain', 'Tudor & Stuart Britain' - etc, a whole series, full of drawings by some bloke called something 'Cantab' which struck me as an odd name. Many of them weren't explained, so a picture of a blindfolded chap walking between red-hot ploughshares, titled "Trial by Ordeal" was a bit mystifying. But these books helped a bit at school.
At the (very ordinary) grammar school I then went to at age 11, we kicked off with prehistory and the Greeks and Romans in the first year, then England (and Scotland, a bit) in chronological order, until when I reached 15 we were up to the causes of WW1, and European history - mostly 18th & 19th centuries.
OK, a lot of it was kings and queens and battles; a lot of it was anecdotes. It may have been mere narrative (I certainly never heard about 'primary and secondary sources') but it gave a framework of dates to hang it all on.
My teacher in our last year gave us the background gen the Boer Wars, and the pre-1914 activities of the 'Great Powers' - so it wasn't all patriotic moonshine.
I wish I'd stayed on after age 16 and studied history properly - it was my best subject - but what would you do with a history degree? Be a teacher, was all anyone suggested. No fear! I left and got a real job, at £150 per annum.
That's history, folks. -
Message 17
Posted by thelastminority (U14702061) on Friday, 24th December 2010
History certainly seems to be taught very differently now than it was when I was at school.Â
interesting stuff. And I appreciate your post.
i wonder when the idea of some kind of coherent history right through from pre-history/Ancient/Conquest to 20th Century/WWI etc, was abandoned. What has been gained (if gained is correct?) seems really good, and good stuff etc, but we have lost something in the process, and that, for me, has been terrible.
but nevetheless, with festive cheer !!!!! -
Message 18
Posted by Minette Minor (U14272111) on Monday, 3rd January 2011
So Thelastminority? Of....?
What you have liked to have been taught at school - concerning History that is? How old are you and why are you so cross with History rather than English or Economics for starters? I'd really like to know.
Minette. -
Message 19
Posted by thelastminority (U14702061) on Monday, 3rd January 2011
Minette,
why indeed so cross?? but not with English or economics ???!!
(if you tell me, how you arrived at that question)
I found economics dreary and lost in description.
And for English we had a relentlessly affable and cheery teacher........
Can't say i was entirely fired up by most of the books we studied (GCSE only).
a play, a poem or two, that Harper Lee book about the deep south.
tell me. why do you right like that? -
Message 20
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Tuesday, 4th January 2011
Last Minority, young Sir/Madam:
I found economics dreary ...Â
They taught you economics - at school? I'm astonished.
If the subject had ever come up at all when I was a lad - beyond some passing reference to Adam Smith in the history lessons - I'm sure there would have been some lively arguments between the teacher and the 16-year old would-be Marxists among us. It would not have been "dreary".
And for English we had a relentlessly affable and cheery teacherÂ
We had a strict-but-fair disciplinarian. No Harper Lee for us, just Shakespeare and Milton and a lot of grammar.
So when you ask:
tell me. why do you right like that?Â
I'm a bit puzzled - but very glad, now, that our teacher wasn't so very affable and cheery. An essay which contained such a (as I assume) spelling error would have been marked in red: "See Me" - followed by a punishment of having to write some suitable & comical sentence of the teacher's devising 1000 times, to be laid on his desk, first thing next morning.
Schools have changed so much, since those bad old days. -
Message 21
Posted by thelastminority (U14702061) on Tuesday, 4th January 2011
friendly ain't they....... -
Message 22
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 5th January 2011
Having spent 37 years teaching history in schools until retirement in 2004 I have held back from this thread, not least because it started with no time frame- and as I recall we were really introduced to history as such in my primary school in 1953-4 : at which point I realised that it was my subject.
So fifty years of personal experience gives me far too much to write about.. There were definitely inadequacies to my mind in what I was taught in my grammar school in the Fifties.. But this I ascribe to several factors.. The school had only one graduate and specialist historian, and in the Lower School we were taught by people who really knew, and understood, little more than they remembered from their own schooldays, and what it said in the text-books, many of which were pretty old. Those teachers too were, I believe, in many cases men who were "war-damaged" in various ways, and in addition to the shocks and blows of war- especially in a place like Oxford- they were really challenged by the post-war reality that they were expected to prepare their pupils for.
Some of them were Old Boys of the school that had been created as a local grammar school in the 1880's and counted Lawrence of Arabia as its most illustrious product, though also the historian Jolliffe and various poets. Ronnie Barker had not yet achieved fame. But by 1955 there were some boys from the working class like me getting through the 11+ process and I really do not think that they had any notion of how to teach us, or to relate to our world or our history.
Even our specialist historian, who had been the Â鶹ԼÅÄ's first Uncle Mac in the Thirties, not only was permanently hampered by being gassed in the First World War, but also- perhaps because of his Â鶹ԼÅÄ career- had no real understanding of how English history fitted in to Word History, at a time when clearly the dynamics of the age were global- including the Cold War and the possibility of Nuclear Holocaust.
Nevertheless I did finally end up leaving school feeling that I had got some kind of foundation in my chosen subject- partly because when I was 15 I decided that I had better take personal responsibility for my own education; but also because our school quite incredibly allowed us (though there was some resistance in my year) to take A Level History, plus A Level Economic History, and an O* Economics which we were able to build on to take A level Economics. This meant that I ended up with a fair foundation in English Economic and Social History from 1066 to 1960- and hence some grasp of the life of the common people- like my forebears.
My approach to the teaching of History was no doubt foreshadowed by those experiences, and from the start I was committed to trying to teach the History that had shaped and was shaping the World of the late Sixties when I entered the Profession.
It was, however, as Professor Plumb explained in the book that he edited in 1962 with that title, a period of "The Crisis in the Humanities". As he explained in his own chapter on history, academic Historians had largely abandonned the concept of History as being a story of progressive dynamics, of "tides in the affairs of men" that could lead on to great things if taken at full flood. And the Humanities no longer claimed their authority as providing the essence of the education that a child needed.
Someone has mentioned the whole obsession with source analysis, and this really can be traced back to the 1920's and the doubts and revisionism after the First World War. The great British historian of this revisionist period was Sir Lewis Namier, and that legacy remained very strong in academic circles- as Professor Plumb observed in the light of the research being carried out by the Ph.D. students of his own university, Cambridge. Dr Kitson Clark, of Cambridge, in his 1960 Ford Lectures on "The Making of Victorian England" also spelled out just how little of the received history of the Victorian Age could be treated as reliable.. History was all flux and chaos, as the workd of man were so often swamped by scientific factors beyond human control.. Our but to obey the claims of science and mathematics, pure and even more applied.
Someone has also asked about when schools abandonned the idea of a narrative sweep of history.. This really came in with the Nuffield Scheme that brought the same kind of DIY investigative approach to History that was being used in Nuffield Science.. In the latter pupils had scientific equipment put in their hands and were expected to replicate the great discoveries of science for themselves, with clever guidance. So in Nuffield History they were just thrown a bundle of evidence, along with the skills that Historians would use, and were expected to come to terms with the human reality behind an event. But that was almost like plucking a piece of current affairs out of the daily press- and examining in depth, but with no context.
Much of this experimental approach was abandonned when Thatcherism took Britain back to the age of Gladstonian Liberalism, and the researches carried out by Matthew Arnold into the superior State-National education in France and Germany. They had stayed true to their idea of a National Curriculum and It was time for a "National Curriculum" for the citizens of a "melting pot" Britain, who should learn something of their own history as future British citizens. It was one of the themes of Thatcherism that was kept by New Labour.
But this- and many of the TV programmes that this demand has spawned- has led to a focus on the Past- as some kind of interesting and entertaining "theme park" to which people can escape from present realities. Yet History as any kind of viable "logos" should be the study of the things that have led up to and are still shaping the Present, and sweeping into the Future, unless we do something to change the dynamics.
So my starting point for eleven year old pupils was always:
We study the Past
so that we can live the Present
with an eye on the Future.
And I made a point of constantly drawing parallels in lessons between things that had happened in the period that we were studying and things that were going to be in the news that day. On the basis of the similarities and differences between the Past and Present events I would tell them to watch the News that evening and predicted what the developments of that day were most likely to be.
[It is perhaps not surprising that our daughter is a very successful Actuary making her living out of Future projections on the basis of mathematical and scientific modelling]
Anyway, since finally "leaving school", I have been writing (too much many people would say) and I am hopefully just finishing the last couple of pages of the project of the last 18 months- "Towards a View of History for Our Own Times".
Cass -
Message 23
Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Thursday, 6th January 2011
Cass
Good post and I agree with you entirely.
As someone else who virtually taught themselves history, my interest was also aroused by one of my schoolmasters; in my case however, he was my English teacher and he liked nothing better than breaking off from punctuation or grammar, and extolling the glorious exploits of our forefathers ( ie Drake, Nelson, Wellington etc).
Perhaps if bona-fide history teachers made the subject more interesting for impressionable young minds, they would get many more people interested.
I always wanted to study history academically, and go on to either teach the subject, or go out into the field as an archaologist - or both.
But, being from working class stock, I was wooed by the excellent money to be earned from being a tradesperson in the early 'sixties, and donned a pair of overalls instead. Oh how I rued that decision later on!
Anyway, enough of spilt milk, thanks for the post, and perhaps through our writing we may hopefully get more youngsters aware of their heritage.
Rooster -
Message 24
Posted by ArweRheged (U14720560) on Thursday, 6th January 2011
TLM
The north/south divide has been evident at least since the Romans first turned up, and I'm not sure it has much to do with class in any event.
I don't know about you, but when I was a lad, history was something I rather enjoyed - but only insofar as I enjoyed anything I had to do at school. Which is to say I found it rather less enjoyable than lurking around smoker's corner and trying to procure litre bottles of Woodpecker cider from the seedier stripe of off-licences.
If you enjoy history, your adult years are when you can give free reign to your interest. Your critical faculties develop and all of a sudden, debating the finer points of the king list of Ebruac suddenly becomes rather more fascinating than sitting on a park bench with said bottle of cider whilst listening to one's chums boasting wildly about their exploits with young ladies.
So, don't blame school. Get stuck in to the history you enjoy. Read about it, form your views and never be afraid to disagree with the experts!
Regards
A R -
Message 25
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) ** on Thursday, 6th January 2011
"So, don't blame school. Get stuck in to the history you enjoy. Read about it, form your views and never be afraid to disagree with the experts!"
Quite agree Arwerheged. Learning doesn't stop at the school gates and any school can only give a child the basics (be it history or any other subject) needed to begin life. From there it is entirely up to the individual to further persue their interests, or not if they so choose. -
Message 26
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Thursday, 6th January 2011
I always wanted to study history academically, and go on to either teach the subject, or go out into the field as an archaologist Â
Then just do it, I did!
I must be about your age and it's the best thing I've ever done and being that bit more mature makes it all the better, even if the knees aren't what they were when it comes to kneeling in the cold mud all day.
As well as being intellectually satisfying, you'll meet the most interesting and engaging people although it does nothing for keeping the alcohol consumption down to the recommended level! -
Message 27
Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Thursday, 6th January 2011
Ferval
Okay, you've given me a cyber kick up the khyber.
I think I'll take your advice and have a scout round my local societies
No prob with the pint n natter afterwards either.
Thanks
Rooster -
Message 28
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Thursday, 6th January 2011
Hi Sleepyrooster,
I don't know where you live but I started some years ago now by doing an adult evening class at my local university in Field Archaeology and have taken it forward from there with the university and local archaeology groups. The gang of us who completed that certificate and some of the lecturers still meet up regularly and have an annual jaunt to somewhere with good archaeology and, equally importantly, good food and wine.
I also have a friend who's currently doing one of the OU archaeology courses and enjoying it.
You'll find details of lots of societies here.
Go for it.
ferval -
Message 29
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 6th January 2011
Thanks for positive posts..
Perhaps I should add to my previous that, though being a History teacher was the one thing I was convinced that I would not be after University, circumstances and real life forced me to look at that prejudice, and realize that my reasons were too heavily based upon negative feelings of one kind or another.
In fact I had grabbed on to the idea of History at the age of ten as my own way to understand and navigate the world that I was living in and realised that this was the kind of empowerment that I thought other schoolchildren should be offered.
I did, however, feel that the younger versions of me were most likely to be in the desperate Inner City and I can not regret the 37 years I spent teaching lots of pupils who really enjoyed History, many of them going on to study the subject at University.
But it is almost equally satisfying to run into ex-pupils for whom it was just part of their general education that seems to have served them well in terms of always trying to look for the positive options in their lives.
But in view of ideas about things being not too late, in something I wrote a couple of years ago I suggested that the Sixties generation had perhaps handed over the batton too prematurely in a JFK type culture in which both real life experience and fully matures historical understanding have been undervalued in a cult of youthfulness.
In spite of deaths like that of Gerry Rafferty just this week, statitically there should be decades of life left in the old dogs yet.
Cass -
Message 30
Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Thursday, 6th January 2011
Thanks Ferval
If I can get my 'Brenner' off this stool, I'll certainly look into it all.
I have a friend who's son is in charge of excavations at the site of Raunds in Northumberland. I suppose I could offer my services there. Problem is, I live in Shropshire. Be knackered by the time I got there each morning!
Seriously though, I will attempt to do some amateur 'delving' in the summer.
cheers, Rooster -
Message 31
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 6th January 2011
Sleepyrooster
Surely there is plenty of industrial archaeology in Shropshire. Perhaps that is not your thing.
As for further affield, I believe that digs are often happy to have students for a few weeks during the holidays. Worse places for a holiday break than Northumberland. Dip your toe in!
Cass -
Message 32
Posted by thelastminority (U14702061) on Thursday, 6th January 2011
i live in fear..... -
Message 33
Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Thursday, 6th January 2011
Cass
Yes, there is indeed a wealth of sites in this county. But to be honest, I have spent too much time researching and writing about history to revert to discovering it other than in books.
However, Ferval and yourself have set me thinking... I'm not too unfit, so perhaps it's not too late and I think I will have a 'dabble' come the good weather. (I aint going sloshin about in the mud - nor gettin me hair wet!)
As an aside to this, abouty forty years or so ago, I purchased one of those then, new-fangled, metal detectors. (Arrrgghhh, I hear the purists cry) but I was young and adventurous back then and didn't realise the damage an amateur could do.
Near to where I lived at that time, was the sprawling, forest covered grounds of Himley Hall nr Dudley. Now, when Mr Guido Fawkes' henchmen were holed up in there after the gunpowder plot failed, local legend had it that they took from the hall a fortune in precious items and buried them somewhere in the woods before riding on to Holbeache House where they were eventually rounded up.
The impetuosity of youth set me to rummaging through these woods with my new toy like some demented sapper combing a minefield.
Needless to say, after six months of Saturday searching (without permission)
my haul amounted to four squashed pewter mugs, a dozen broken clay pipes, and about 3kg of spent musket balls.
No Indiana Jones, me!
Anyway, I gave that up and got married. Nuff said!
But when I took early retirement, I decided to write about history and have been glued to my cpu ever since.
Hope I haven't bored the pants off anyone reading this, but there you are.
Rooster -
Message 34
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 6th January 2011
Sleepyrooster
Well at least I think you have said that you have managed to get into print.. Still something that I have to achieve.
Cass -
Message 35
Posted by thelastminority (U14702061) on Thursday, 6th January 2011
Casseroleon,
from your post no.22, i appreciate the candid (camera) description of things from your point of view. I would say some of your later paragraphs were the deliberate mistakes i.e. one of the changes in the national curriculum during the 1980s was towards primary and secondary sources, not replacing them with whatever you said about Gladstone?
One of the things that has annoyed me however, so much (and conversely what i appreciate so much), is the book, A Brief of History of the Tudor Age, J.Ridley. Literally, according to Ridley, the Wars of the Roses wiped out about a half of the old English aristocracy, leaving just 41 temporal peers, and HVII and HVIII for all practical purposes wiped out the rest of em !!!!! - throughout the 1500s there were no Dukes (apart from the few that were created and then beheaded for treason within a few years, and a few of HVIII close relatives), no earls, one marquis, and then less than a dozen old barons. -
Message 36
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Thursday, 6th January 2011
If you still have a hankering for some legitimate metal detecting, sleepy, there are opportunities to do so, particularly in battlefield and conflict archaeology. You'd be amazed what can be deduced from musket balls by those who know how to interpret their distribution, condition etc.
I recently heard a talk by a research student who works with Tony Pollard on battlefields and part of her brief was to try to link up with metal detecting clubs to try to bring their results up to some kind of standard which would add to the corpus of knowledge. On the whole she was none too successful, finding that as an academic and a fairly young woman, she had real difficulty breaking through prejudice and stereotyping.
Do try to do some field work, it'll illuminate all that research in a way nothing else can, give you immense satisfaction and it's really good fun(most of the time). I can't wait for the ground to thaw out and get back into my lovely valley where we're trying to pin down the neolithic-mesolithic transition in inland Scotland. -
Message 37
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Thursday, 6th January 2011
I'm not sure what this has to do with learning history at school, but while the old aristocracy may have been lost, new people rose to take their place. The book I am reading about the rise of scientific methods and the beginning of the Royal Society mentions frequently the rise of middle class people to positions of power and gentlemen status within a couple of generations. Sometimes this happened because of political support, sometimes because of achievements (Newton was the son of a farmer who could not read or write). It does as if at this time there was something of a mingling of the classes which rigidified throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 38
Posted by thelastminority (U14702061) on Thursday, 6th January 2011
Caro,
interesting stuff. i'm guessing a bit, but a good number of new peers were created during the 1600s. The Duke of Leeds was perhaps a typical example. He was a Government official, then minster etc.....he didn't start life a "Duke".
I believe there were lots and lots of peers created during the 1800s however. Lots of them. please let me know ?? -
Message 39
Posted by Mr_Edwards (U3815709) on Friday, 7th January 2011
I have a friend who's son is in charge of excavations at the site of Raunds in Northumberland.Â
I'm 99% sure that Raunds is in Northamptonshire. Certainly when I was a kid, Bourne Town played Raunds Town at football in the United Counties League.
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