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Message 2
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Friday, 29th April 2011
Marx defines the function of ideology as:-
naturalizing the existing social order, making it appear timeless, universal, god given, without conceivable alternative, making interests that are sectional appear universal and masking reality by denying social and economic inequality.
Ideology is materialised in, and demonstrated through, ceremonial performance, symbolic objects and monumental buildings and when that ideology encounters resistance it can be subtly altered in an attempt to continue to mask that inequality and create and reproduce a false consciousness.
I would suggest that this pretty much sums up the royal wedding as a quite sophisticated ploy to maintain that false consciousness and imply that social mobility is actually possible 鈥 you too can be a princess. Now Weber asserts that ideology can only be effective with a degree of acquiescence from those who are, in effect, excluded from that power system so what does that say about us? -
Message 3
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Saturday, 30th April 2011
Yesterday the 麻豆约拍 played old footage of the crowd scenes from the marriages of the Queen Mother, Elizabeth II and Charles with the comment that we were more deferential in the past.
I was quite amazed at this conclusion, the scenes from the 1920s and 50s were of virtual chaos with people running, rushing and pushing for the merest glimpse of the royals. Taken in comparison to the 1980s and today with our orderly, regimented ranks of thousands who were all politely waving their little flags I'd say we, today, are far more deferential than in the past. However much we may like to kid ourselves that we've "moved on". -
Message 4
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 30th April 2011
Actually ID I am not sure that this greater degree of calmness- [ that amazing scene when a thin line of London Bobbies just held the surge down the Mall to the Palace down to a sedate pace at which there was no risk of young and old, or anyone else getting trampled]- was not due in a great measure to the widespread possession of mobile phones and other portable technologies.
Rumours, misinformation and ignorance were/are often things that blight mass-behaviour, feeding off insecurity.. On this occasion people in the crowd had a pretty good idea of exactly what was going on, and presumably the same kind of technology made the seemingly "clockwork" nature of the whole thing appear to go so smoothly.. All concerned -including the pilots doing the fly-past- were no doubt similarly kept in touch... So it was reassuring. Even the predicted showers held off.
But I agree with Minette- social climbing has been part of the secret of England's success. But it has succeeded because certain character attributes are necessary to pull it off. And there were definite signs when Kate was not smiling, but thinking hard, of the kind of firm jaw that had brought those Durham miners genes up through "the ranks".. One of her school-mates said that an early memory was of Kate as the captain of the hockey team. A bit of miner's hacking skill probably helped there.
Harold Perkin showed in his study of the Origins of English Society, that England did have a society not based upon classes but upon a complex social ladder, which it was possible to climb up- or fall down.
Minette can tell us about the Welsh experience, but it does seem that there was not the same kind of ladder in either Scotland and Ireland, hence a Great Britain that included these populations became a place of social classes and the destruction of the kind of social ideal that had been expressed in the English Commonweal concept. Hence the kind of Lancashire that could inform Engels, and through him Marx, and create the idea that the "Working Class" could just become a ruling class through revolution..
[Of course many people benefitting from the Scottish educational revolution started at the end of the Seventeenth Century, came to feel that you could pick up all the useful knowledge you needed to achieve this just by reading and discussing books..Hence the new idea of a "ladder of opportunity" became increasingly associated with education (eventually x3) ]..
Perhaps the wedding showed a very English reluctance to trust merely to contemporary intelligence and genius, and to value the wisdom and ways that have been handed down to us..
As for the wedding I must say that watching it was an interesting experience for me, and not least because I could see myself at some point in the not too distant future being father-of-the bride like Mr Middleton.. My brother "gave-away" three daughters.. I have just the one- and it was therefore interesting to see a "dream wedding" in 2011. But there were also at the heart some resonances with our son's very simple wedding in 2009.
But when I saw the dress my past associations went back to Pincess Elizabeth's wedding in 1947, which surely I do not remember from the time- though perhaps subsequent exposure to photographs may well have kept such connections in my memory..
Having decided, however, to give all the processing a "miss".. As the couple stood on the brink at the Abbey doorway, I was suddenly transported back to 1953 and what was surely the first televisual experience for so many people who decided to get a TV to see the Coronation.
So I was struck with the resonances that 2011 shared with 1953, and a collective, communal seizing of the chance to celebrate something that cemented hope and commitment to the Future after dark times in which there has been little cause for true optimism and belief..
At such rites of passage there is always an element of extravagance which signifies that what is being invested is minimal in terms of what the event means in terms of the determination of all the work to realise the dreams and ambitions that surround the event. This was true of the most simple weddings when people threw some of the potential seed-corn of their next crops over the married couple..
As I wrote in a song "When the wedding's done, the marrying has just begun"..One of the people I saw being interviewed that touched me most was an old lady of perhaps my age who was at a street party in Northern Ireland who said how pleased she was that there were people from across the divide...
"The marrying has just begun".. But all things need a start, and Kate and William said right at the start that they were so happy that they had it in their gift to give everyone a day's holiday- and they hoped that everyone would use it -as the Americans might say- for "The pursuit of happiness".
Our daughter sent us a text message yesterday to say that she had arrived safely in Bali, and was happy with her hotel.
Cass -
Message 5
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 30th April 2011
ferval
Your Marxist deffinition of idealogy seems to be a pretty accurate description of Marx's own efforts to create an ideology in an era when similar Middle Class people [owners of intellectual and material capital] were bidding to use such ideologies in order to assume power...
There is a case for saying that predominantly non-English ideologues were rationalising England's monarchy at that time into the "Crown Government" that they could gain control over and bend to their Middle Class ends..
They were even able to use English history in order to keep the very well-educated and apparently intelligent Prince Albert out of the real corridors of power. And it is very difficult to think of any member of the Royal Family since who would have "made it" into a ruling meritocracy- and that world of ideology.
In any case the concept of a Meritocracy understanding the "inevitability of history" has now been blown and has no real credibility.. Just so many "wisest fools in Christendom"..
Hence the questionning of an electoral system based upon the ability of the "thinking world" to achieve a clear synthesis that offers the electorate a simple choice based upon "the eternal difference between the conservative and the progressive minds."..
Meanwhile the Common People of England know, as they did a thousand years ago, that the members of the Royal Family are in essence just as common as they are. Like them they are rooted in life from birth, and are not book-based re-inventions and re-brandings from time spent in "Ivory Towers".
And I come back to the old-English reality of the document written around AD 1000 which laid down the rights and duties of the various sections of English society presumably in the Cambridge region (because that was where the document was kept).. and the concept of rights and duties also applied to the "post" of monarch of England.
The wedding was perhaps Kate Middleton's first experience of the "harness" that she has chosen to don for the rest of her life.
Cass -
Message 6
Posted by VoiceOfReason (U14405333) on Saturday, 30th April 2011
This man appears to live in an self penned English version of Brigadoon....
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Message 7
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 30th April 2011
I have not seen Brigadoon as far as I am aware- so I can not comment on that aspect of the comment.. But I rather thought that it was the kind of romaticising of the past that came into English life with the "tartan romances" of Sir Walter Scott.
This too was part of the Scottish romance of Victorian Britain, with both T.B. Macaulay and G.M. Trevelyan paying tribute to Scott's ability to write stories with really strong and individualistic characters. This encouraged that idea of heroic individualism that Thomas Carlyle took up, encouraging Britain to look for its salvation in his heroes like the Germans Schiller and Goethe, and his prefered strong men of government Oliver Cromwell and Frederick the Great. And this finally militated against the efforts to heal Britain after the traumas of the Age of Revolution 1776-1848.
As for the "self-penned"- I am regularly critised for my extensive use of the material that I have collected that has been written by others. But as for my use of it I make no apologies for thinking for myself. I expected everybody to aspire to do the same and not treat mere writers as authorities, or their work as established evidence of anything more than a purely "chronic" state of their thinking.
Cass -
Message 8
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
In 1847 in a speech on State education T.B. Macaulay said:
鈥淎 hundred and fifty years ago England was one of the best governed and most prosperous countries in the world; Scotland was perhaps the rudest and poorest country that could lay claim to civilisation鈥︹漑Then a system of parochial schools was set up].. 鈥淲hat followed? An improvement such as the world had never seen took place in the moral and intellectual character of the people. Soon, in spite of the rigour of the climate, in spite of the sterility of the earth, Scotland became a country which had no reason to envy the fairest parts of the globe. Wherever the Scotchman went - and there were few parts of the world to which he did not go- he carried his superiority with him. If he was admitted to public office, he worked his way up to the highest post. If he got employment in a brewery or a factory, he was soon foreman. If he took a shop his trade was the best in the street. If he enlisted in the army he became a colour-sergeant. If he went to a colony, he was the most thriving planter there鈥he cry was that, wherever he came, he got more than his share; that mixed with Englishmen or mixed with Irishmen, he rose to the top as surely as oil rises to the top of water.鈥
Macaulay and his own family were proof of this way that an education revolution impacted on a Scotland now united with an England where wealth and prosperity, and a ladder of opportunity, had been built over the previous 1000 years.
As Macaulay had written on the subject of History in 1828 the new British intellectual elite had within a couple of generations worked out on paper the basic ideas that would make it possible to reform the world using the powers of the Westminster Parliament. And his later History of England became one of the great and inspiring stories of the progress of that country, and the potential for future progress-the true story of History.
By the 1860鈥檚 those powers were being used to bring about an education revolution in England and Wales. One fruit of that revolution, that came to embrace the need to teach the young to take up 鈥淭he White Man鈥榮 Burden鈥, was D.H. Lawrence, son of a coal miner. In a piece entitled 鈥淣obody Loves Me鈥 in 1929 he wrote:
鈥淭he last generation and the one before that insisted on loving humanity. They cared terribly for the poor suffering Irish and Armenians and Congo rubber Negroes and all that. And it was a great deal of it fake, self-conceit, self-importance. The bottom of it was the egoistic thought: 鈥橧鈥檓 so good, I鈥檓 so superior, I鈥檓 so benevolent, I care intensely about the poor suffering Irish and the martyred Armenians and the oppresses Negroes, and I鈥檓 going to save them, even if I have to upset the English and the Turks and the Belgians severely鈥. This love of mankind was half self-importance and half a desire to interfere and put a spoke in other people鈥檚 wheels. The younger generation, smelling the rat under the lamb鈥檚-wool of Christian Charity, said to themselves: No love of humanity for me鈥 And who can blame them? Their loving forbears brought on the Great War. If love of humanity brought on the Great War, let us see what frank and honest egoism will do. Nothing so horrible, we can bet.鈥
In fact the great economic power that Britain had unleashed in the world through industrialization had once again catastrophic consequences as the global economy and individuals within it descended into egoism and the pursuit of self-interest, while ignoring the fate of people 鈥渋n far off lands of whom we know nothing鈥.. apart from in print, and by the thirties ideologies were suspect.
There was another Great War, and then the great risk of a third. But the risk was managed down by undermining the credibility of ideologies and promoting a culture of material self-interest and egoism. Lawrence ended that piece:
鈥淭he love of humanity is gone, leaving a great gap. The cosmic consciousness has collapsed into a great void鈥
And this would appear to be the natural consequence of a written culture in which people can-like Karl Marx- review the whole history and the wider story of humankind filtered through their own brain, without actually coming into live and meaningful contact with things that are alien.
It means that- like Lawrence鈥檚 generations taught to love humanity- it is possible to believe that essentially everyone is the same as you, which saves a great deal of effort in finding out that you are much like everybody else. For as D.H. Lawrence wrote in another piece about human perfectibility- which 鈥測ou鈥, out of the infinite number of people you could be, should you try to perfect.
Cass -
Message 9
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
God help his daughter when she gets married鈥 can you imagine the speech鈥 they鈥檒l all still be there for the funerals鈥 there鈥檚 some that love the sound of their own voice, the clever ones know when to keep it shut.
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Message 10
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
Before they become a bore鈥
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Message 11
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
Bandick
I am sorry to be an irritant to those who like to go to History to "get away from it all" as a leisure pursuit as that thread puts it- especially those who have a lot of other things to put up with, which I believe to be your case.
But as for my daughter she has long experience of managing her Dad.. and I intend to be guided by my older brother, who said in perhaps the first of his father-of-the groom outings.. "I was once told that a speech should be like a bikini. As brief as possible and covering three main points".
Cass -
Message 12
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
Well said the wiser brother鈥 so what went wrong鈥 no please don鈥檛 answer that鈥 we鈥檇 only get quote on quote from every tom dick and harry in the library鈥 but seldom what the man thinks鈥 always the same going on and on like a tramps overcoat鈥 sometimes wonder if the man has an opinion of his own鈥
Regards bandick -
Message 13
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
i was always told that making a speech is like drilling for oil. If you don't strike oil in the first 5 minutes, stop boring.
GF -
Message 14
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
bandick
To be brief- (Point One) when I started trying to work out my opinions on paper and had a body of work, I was criticised for it being entirely original and "self-penned", and for going back to such fundamentals that I seemed to be re-inventing the wheel.. But then that is what happens when people need to be born again.
(Point Two) At the time I was teaching in deprived inner London where I had to "keep it simple".. and this continued to be of value to pupils right throughout my career.. But predominantly those pupils- while I could help them to take some control over their own lives- were by definition not really the "movers and shakers" of the world, and were deprived by our modern systems of the power to change those systems, which are becoming ever more like "closed shops" for the Oxbridge set. Fortunately- thanks to a remarkable Scottish Headteacher- I was able to finish my teaching career teaching pupils right up to Oxbridge entrance, and have some access to the world of "movers and shakers".
(Point three) Rather like the situation in Libya- popular uprising and small-arms fire can get you so far. But real change tends to call for heavy weapons, when there is a well-entrenched and moribund establishment with access to the awesome power of the State.
What we need is a fourth English Revolution, to follow on from our fourth Scottish Succession. The Stuart Succession in 1603 led to the first English Revolution and Civil War. Charles II's Restoration was negotiated. The second Scottish Succession saw James II come to the throne, followed by the "Glorious Bloodless Revolution" of 1688-9.
The third Scottish Succession came in 1760, when the accession of George III was accompanied by an "invasion" of North Britons. This produced the American Revolution, with knock-on effects- the Tory Revolution of William Pitt the Younger and the most violent decades of the Industrial Revolution.
The fourth Scottish Succession was when Gordon Brown was foisted on to the British as the unrivalled successor to Tony Blair, and thus a PM without a clear personal mandate from the electorate. We are now back in need of the kind of revolutionary transformation that England has been able to bring about before.
Cass -
Message 15
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
A question for you, Cass...
What were the last three serious history books that you read that were published *within* the last forty years...?
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Message 16
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
Catigern
If you seriously wish to know-- rather than find material for attacks like those you make on Minette.
Presumably by "serious" you mean produced by the academic ivory tower dream factories and the TV spin offs.. The self-serving system described by GM Trevelyan in 1913 and Professor Plumb in 1962. The kind of thing that enables Oxford and such university presses to say that they only really print the books that students need in order to pass their examinations-
So you may not treat as serious the Colossus by Niall Ferguson- that he seems to have written as part of his academic stint in Harvard a couple of years ago.
Perhaps not the Third Edition of "The Economic System in the UK by Oxford University Press. (1995)
Or Diarmid MacCulloch's Whitbread winning biography of Cranmer (1996) -
What about the whole of Eric Hobsbawm's series -"The Age of Revolution", "The Age of Capital" , "The Age of Empire" and "The Age of Extremes"- the last written in 1994.
It is true, however, that I prefer reading primary sources- including the history books of the earlier periods _ "The Lost Generations" of that aspect of English-Speaking Civilization that one US Professor summed up in the forties as suffering from "The loss of the father"-- an orphan generation that feels entitled to live in the "family estate" but ignore the heritage that made it.
Cass -
Message 17
Posted by VoiceOfReason (U14405333) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
He is clearly a wind up merchant
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Message 18
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
David Starkey gave an interesting take on what the Royal Wedding says about the current state of the UK monarchy (and what it says about the current state of the UK) on Channel 4 News:
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Message 19
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
Cass
If you seriously wish to know-- rather than find material for attacks like those you make on Minette.聽
I seriously wished to know - I have good reasons for attacking Minette, as I have related more than once.
Presumably by "serious" you mean produced by the academic ivory tower dream factories...聽
Ooooh - miaow!
...and the TV spin offs.聽
TV spin-offs are not my idea of 'serious' history...
...Niall Ferguson... "The Economic System in the UK by Oxford University Press... Eric Hobsbawm聽
You show a marked preference for modern economic/materialist history, by people not taken very seriously as historians of earlier eras, yet you often comment on long-term history pre-modern times. May I suggest that you sample at least one of the following:
Nick Higham's 'The English Conquest: Gildas and Britain in the Fifth Century'
Norman MacDougall's 'James IV'
Tim Harris's 'Restoration: Charles II and his Kingdoms'
I think you might find them quite refreshing...
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Message 20
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
Catigern
Thank you for your post and your suggestions..
Perhaps I should add that some of the most interesting up to date historical thinking that I am exposed to is on French TV, particularly the Channel Three "Ce Soir Ou Jamais" evening programme, which frequently features among the studio panel French University Historians- and others from other disciplines- often who have just published a new book, the fruits of which they bring to bear on the issue being debated that evening.
This greater public interest in front line academic thought is probably one reason why I married a French woman because I do believe in the need for fundamental analysis and change.
Camping in the Groupment des Campeurs Universitaires has also provided interesting experiences. A few years ago- I met a Professor who specialised in the science of aircraft engine noise, and who ran courses for post-grads. What was interesting was that he was very aware of the fundamental difference between "Anglais" students (French for British) and the French ones. The British ones were really quite bored with the fundamental theoretical analysis, while the French just loved the intricases of rational discussion. But when it came to practical assignments and trying to work out practical solutions that worked - the "English" really came alive and outdid the French.
My interest in French thought- nb writers like Camus and Anouilh- preceded my wife (as is) really coming into my life, and I think that I was always predisposed to thinking about fundamentals and the overall sweep of life.
So "make do and mend" can only get one so far..though I did suggest to Mr. Cameron's office that what we needed initially was that spirit rather than a "Age of Austerity", when he announced that idea.
Sooner or later we have to face up to fundamental questions, and my thesis is that- as is shown for example in Robert Skidelski's biography of J.M. Keynes- people like the Cambridge Apostles were really asking fundamental questions about the economic/materialist civilization that was becoming ever more dominant.
And after the First World War there was a great effort to tackle the challenge of a new Civilization. My generation discovered the art and fictional literature of that period - Picasso, Dali, Kafka, Woolf, Lawrence, E.M, Forster etc- and grasped their mood of challenge to the establishment, without really going deeper into the attempts to tackle the challenge of the twentieth century.
For this reason the Sixties generation - and the French still look back at "Les Evenments de Soixante Huite" much as they look back nostalgically to the Paris Commune and sing "Le Temp des Cerises"- were brought up severed from what should have been their parental culture- orphans handed over to social care and the Welfare State, based upon its late Victorian principles.
So two of the studies that I have written before my most recent "History For Our Own Times", were one based upon some of D.H.Lawrence's more general writing that I have entitled "The Staggering Truth", and another that explores the English-French dynamic over time that I entitled "Cock and Bull Stories"- Virginia Woolf manages to come into that because of the French fascination with Woolf (my wife did her MA thesis on a comparative study of time and structure in Proust and Woolf".
But with my more major initial work "English Peace" completed some time ago, I have been able to feel that I have fulfilled the task that I set myself in 1955..
When I taught my last lesson in 2004 one of my pupils saw me shaking my shoulders in an unusual way and a thought flash across my face.. She asked what had happened: and I explained that there was a point early in my teaching career when I had realised that I was now "in harness"- like the great farm workhorses that my grandfather handled. And now I had felt them fall off.
The idea of writing something started soon after I went into harness because the pupils wanted to know whether I was Right Wing or Left Wing, and I explained that I had refused to be bound by that limitation and had tried to go in another direction. A third dimension.
I compared it to the situation of Atlantic exploration when the choice was South round Africa or West around Scandinavia. Columbus thought the answer might lie to the West.. And eventually once the victory over the Moors seemed to lift the Muslim threat from at least Western Europe, he found someone to listen to him.. But that all ended in tears and chains.
So I think that I have done what I could do in History- to the detriment of other parts of my life .. It has been perhaps a bit of a "White Man's Burden" legacy.. But many of my pupils will be taking the subject forward in their own way -
So it is probably time for me to get on with neglected things. Matthew Arnold said in his poem on the death of Wordsworth, after Byron and Goethe- "Art still has truth, take refuge there."
Regards and good luck with your own Historical adventure
Cass -
Message 21
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
Cass
Perhaps I should add that some of the most interesting up to date historical thinking that I am exposed to is on French TV, particularly the Channel Three "Ce Soir Ou Jamais" evening programme, which frequently features among the studio panel French University Historians- and others from other disciplines- often who have just published a new book, the fruits of which they bring to bear on the issue being debated that evening.聽
I'm afraid my only exposure to TV history has been to the Anglophonic sort, which I've found very disappointing. I'm not alone in this - there's a general lack of respect for 'Meejah-dons' in British universities, which I don't think can be put down to envy. Perhaps it's because TV companies seem to sieze upon a few academics and invite them to 'present' on subjects that they wouldn't be expected to teach in the course of their university careers.
A few years ago- I met a Professor who specialised in the science of aircraft engine noise, and who ran courses for post-grads. What was interesting was that he was very aware of the fundamental difference between "Anglais" students (French for British) and the French ones. The British ones were really quite bored with the fundamental theoretical analysis, while the French just loved the intricases of rational discussion. But when it came to practical assignments and trying to work out practical solutions that worked - the "English" really came alive and outdid the French.聽
Perhaps that says more about the relationships between philosophy, engineering and science in British HE than about us and les frogs - we've no shortage of theoretical mathematicians, eg, and York at least used to offer degrees in 'physics and philosophy'...
I was always predisposed to thinking about fundamentals and the overall sweep of life.聽
In which case, I must redouble my recommendations that you look at pre-/early Anglo-Saxon stuff and some self-consciously 'British' history...
there was a point early in my teaching career when I had realised that I was now "in harness"- like the great farm workhorses that my grandfather handled. And now I had felt them fall off.聽
Enjoy your retirement!
... the pupils wanted to know whether I was Right Wing or Left Wing, and I explained that I had refused to be bound by that limitation and had tried to go in another direction. A third dimension.聽
Be careful that you don't slip into Blairism...
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Message 22
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
PS, in case you do decide to follow up my recommendations, but the particular works prove awkward to find, I can also vouch for the authors' other books, eg Higham on Bede, MacDoagall on James III and Harris's 'Revolution'.
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Message 23
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
Catigern
(a) It is really quite interesting just how much the French still like to have all of their venerable "talking heads" on TV.. and in fact I personally find some marvellous things on the "Arte" channel that spans Germany and France- at least.. I am not sure that there has been anything quite like it in British broadcasting since the must-listen to Third Programme of my childhood, when the idea that the war had been fought for the sake of Christian Civilization still had some meaning..
J.B. Priestly, for example, had observed that the British had never appreciated high culture as much as they did during the war.. And I have often suspected that, though my father was a long-distance lorry driver (or perhaps because) we had the orchestral conductor Karl Rankle and his wife billeted on us at the time I was born.. Delusions of grandeur perhaps.
(b) Regarding theoretical mathematics and pure science, it does seem quite typical of the age that our daughter who did a Physics Masters at Oxford went into the Finance Industry became an Actuary..
It is true that her great friend who was the best Physicist of her year went on to take on the challenge of mapping the Universe- but he had to take up an academic position in Sydney in order to complete it.. Oxford's mists and mellow fruitfulness are not terribly conducive, it seems..
And how many people just do subjects in order to get degrees and open doors. I was quite shocked when I met my fellow historians as a fresher that none of them had any real reason to study History, apart from the fact that their school had told them that it was their best chance of a degree... I did, however, point out to some pupils on the basis of one of our daughter's boyfriends that Theology was quite a good choice if you really wanted to get into Oxford.
(c) Yes. I was somewhat miffed when decades later Mandleson and that NZ New Labour spin doctor (?) started talking about "the Third Way".. But the idea was just so obvious that it was more irritating that it took so long for someone else to come up with the idea decades too late. But the ex-colleague who made the "re-inventing the wheel" comment, was very complementary about my first published article "Partners" and used in in teaching his University Course on Urban Studies. Two decades later Blair came up with the importance of "Partnership".
Cass -
Message 24
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 1st May 2011
PS This Norman MacDougal would that be Scottish History-- James III and James IV looks like it has to be.
I have been waiting for someone to come up with a recommendation that would widen my knowledge of Scottish history.. My most recent Scottish adventure was the excellent biography of the Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown written a few years ago by the sister of a colleague herself of formidable intellect who always enjoyed our "Socratic Dialogues".
Cass -
Message 25
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 2nd May 2011
Catigern
(a) Re Philosophy in Britain and France-
I believe that it is only recently that the Philosophy Baccalaureate has only recently lost its dominant position as THE most important and popular study for French 鈥淪ixth-Formers鈥.. Its position in British studies has been peripheral- as History was in Trevelyan鈥檚 childhood when he was allowed to do History at Harrow as a special privilege because of his father and great uncle, and at Cambridge there were only about 7 students per year.
And further to old and new books- as for me everything 鈥渕an-made鈥 is a potential source of Historical material- two recent books have been :
Nicholas Crane鈥檚 鈥淕reat British Journeys鈥 in which he re-enacts some of those journey鈥檚 that 鈥渕ade Britain鈥 from Gerald of Wales jaunt around Wales in the twelfth century recruiting for the Crusade- marrying extracts of the text to what is now apparent.
And 鈥淕reat Excavations. John Romer鈥檚 History of Archaeology鈥, which is interesting since this still seems to be possible to describe as a story of progress- like Bronowski鈥檚 鈥淎scent of Man鈥, in which the work of the pioneers is still valued and understood.
And last night two chapters fitted an 鈥渙ld book鈥 that has been important in the evolution of my thinking into that story, as I read of the impact of the work of Henri Frankfort as leader of the Chicago team of archaeologists. John Romer concluded: 鈥淚n those last years..he poured out a series of brilliant books and articles that broke quite free from the savage nineteenth-century vision of the past, replacing it with a past of perfectly intelligent people with minds not one jot inferior to ours..鈥
Mr and Mrs Frankfort and two others of the Frankfort team were responsible for the book 鈥淏efore Philosophy鈥 which uses the ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts that they translated in order to produce a resume and key quotes for the ideas germinating in those two 鈥渃radles of Civilization鈥 that have an enduring impact on our lives.
(b) Re Scottish Successions and English Revolutions
I did write and distribute a piece on this when Mr Brown took office, for he seemed very much 鈥渋n character鈥 of the previous examples when power was assumed by people whose authority was predominantly based upon wide reading, and whose failure to 鈥済et it鈥 when it comes to actual human relations had not prevented their accession to power because they had proved useful within a power-base that elevated them for its own ends.
A personal example of this particular kind of Scottish character was the Headmistress who had totally transformed the fortune and standing of my last school. But I characterised her methodology as brow-beating and bluster. At one secret and 鈥渋llegal鈥 staff Xmas dinner I was awarded a special certificate for 鈥減utting my head above the parapet鈥-- because most people just let her have her way.
But ,like combatants do, we did learn to respect each other, and not long before her retirement she introduced me to someone from head office as someone who made her heart sink, when she saw my hand up in a meeting, because she knew that I would move the debate off her chosen course.. 鈥淎nd on reflection he was usually right鈥.. For History is about understanding the present.
Perhaps the most classic example was one staff study day when the Head, a Chemistry teacher, wanted us to think of what made a good or a bad lesson.
She kicked off by describing her worst lesson as a young teacher. Her Chemistry had gone wrong. She had set fire to the Lab. Her career could have been over, and she made the girls realise that they must never breath a word.
Cass' hand went up.
鈥淗ow many of those girls (then 13) went on to study A Level Chemistry?鈥濃 She had obviously never looked at the experience whole before.. And there was the clear sign of revelation over her face when she said that about three quarters of the class had done so- an incredible proportion. It would be nice to think that this airing of a dark secret that she had kept all these years had resulted in a sense of redemption.
The pupils had truly witnessed how interesting Chemistry could be, and how human this apparently stern and authoritarian teacher was behind the fa莽ade.
Cass -
Message 26
Posted by Minette Minor (U14272111) on Wednesday, 1st June 2011
When a post is hidden it always looks as though it was rude or vitriolic. It wasn't. I still say Marx was right -
"The law is the manifestation of the wishes of the ruling classes".
The end. -
Message 27
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Thursday, 2nd June 2011
So what?
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