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Writing 'alternative' history
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Tuesday, 17th May 2011
I am appalled by the lack of British history taught nowadays in our schools.
One day a couple of years or so ago, I fell into conversation with a group of sixth-formers who included my granddaughter. They were comparing notes on their upcoming GCSE history exam, and I was perturbed to hear that the exam consisted only of middle eastern history.
When I asked them what they had learned about their own country's history, I was shocked by how little they knew. For instance, none of them knew who Winston Churchill was. Then, according to these 'well educated' young people, Lord Nelson was a pirate, General Montgommery was a golfer, and Walter Raleigh invented the bicycle.
All this prompted me to write and have published, a book of short stories depicting characters and pivotal events during this islands long and varied history. I embroidered the stories somewhat, and turned them into 'alternative' accounts to make them read like adventure stories. It did the trick in as much as these young people bought the book and enjoyed the tales so much that they began to take an active interest in the real historical events and characters that created them.
I don't know why our youngsters are no longer taught in-depth British history in our schools; could it be another product of 'multi culturism' and political correctness, or is the educational establishment ashamed of our history?
I think having pride in this country stems from learning about its past glories (and mistakes) and extolling the virtues it encouraged throughout the world.
Rooster -
Message 2
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 17th May 2011
Sleepyrooster
We have been here before.. and I hope that your book continues to do well.. Presumably when you say "upcoming GCSE" you are not being strictly accurate..
As part of the working party that created one of the 16+ GCSE courses out of the previous CSE and O Level ones I am aware that it is an exam intended to be taken before Sixth Form level.. and a great deal depends upon just what course options a school takes. There is plenty of British history available- including the global affairs that impacted on a wider Britishness. The "Nuffield Courses" always allowed something different. The development of modern medicine rather than more political and current affairs history was popular.
But that surely just reflects a very passive and consumerist view to the process of "making history" in the present.. Most pupils in my experience do not aspire to the level of maths and science basic education that is a pre-requisite for Medical studies. ..The most that they hope to understand is how to take drugs etc.. Time was when Computer Studies courses started with explaining how Computers work and what binary is- and such. Now the pupils consume computers as Play Stations.
So we come back to the point that I keep making and made most recently on Minette's thread, the fact that by the 1960's Professor Plumb the Cambridge Professor of Modern History could write that history had given up its social function, and was no longer seen as a useful tool with which to try to steer through the present into a better Future.
And once more I am back with receiving polite letters from publishers telling me that they do not deal with would be authors as I finished my latest offering "History For Our Own Times" a couple of months ago..
But - as I await the first episode of Fergal Keane's new TV History of Ireland, I am also thinking of something I posted yesterday on the Civilization thread. Namely the important and ground-breaking work of the period 1660-1760 when people often labelled what they wrote a "Discourse" or an "Essay". In other words a contribution to an ongoing process or debate.. Hence for a long time my working title was "Towards a View of History for Our Own Times"- very much in that spirit.
Cass -
Message 3
Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Tuesday, 17th May 2011
Cass
Yes, we have certainly been down this road before...but I still feel as strongly now as I did then.
My niece is deputy head of a school over in the west midlands, and she too is rather sympathetic to my argument.
You remember as well as I do that years ago, British history was taught throughout our early school years on a much broader basis than that taught today. I still think that the education system is flawed regarding the teaching of British history, and without being racist in any way or means, I do tend to put this down to multiculturism.
I honestly feel that our children are missing out on the thrill and pride that well taught history would instill in them - and that this in itself helps to give them no national pride or sense of direction.
By the way, don't take literary rejection to heart; keep pushing your book!
I had a dozen rejection slips until my book was accepted.
Regards, Rooster -
Message 4
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 17th May 2011
Sleepyrooster
My own view is naturally shaped a great deal by my own experience, and that was to be growing up in an Oxford immediately after the war when there did seem to be some residual impetus in embracing the fact that the war had been fought for an all-embracing vision of a Christian Civilization with a brotherhood of man. It seemed to me to be something that those silent stone walls of Oxford heart were built to foster, and something that the surrounding "Green and Pleasant Land" was glad to house, shelter and nurture.
But just as Medieval Oxford was built to be part of a wider Christendom, and English Medieval History can be taught in that wider context- as one example of Europe at that time, so Oxford of my childhood was a Univeristy and a town that was part of an Empire on which the sun never set. [ I have only recently discovered why there was a Museum called "Pitt Rivers" with things from all over the world just off the University Parks].
But that Britain was already in retreat.. I discovered today that when I met the writer Han Suyin on a train between Dover and London in January 1966 she had been in Paris where she met Andre Malraux, and was on her way shortly to go to meet Bertrand Russell. It is my thesis that these kind of "front-line" thinkers from the inter-war generation were part of a "Lost Generation" of Western thought, lost after 1945 by an age that just did not dare to tackle the challenge of the inadequacies in Western Civilization that had led to World Chaos and the Second World War, but retreated to Victorian ideas and models that had seemed to work OK, particularly the kind of State intervention advocated by the Labour Party, inspired by the recent successes of the German model pre 1900.
But the Labour Party was a Victorian white middle class creation, a form of domestic "White Man's Burden" which tended to be hostile to Empire, and to the idea of a wider global role for the whole of Great Britain. A British meritocracy would manage Britain and educate other countries to also have educated (x3) Meritocracies to run their own affairs. -
Message 5
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 17th May 2011
Sleepyrooster
My own view is naturally shaped a great deal by my own experience, and that was to be growing up in an Oxford immediately after the war when there did seem to be some residual impetus in embracing the fact that the war had been fought for an all-embracing vision of a Christian Civilization with a brotherhood of man. It seemed to me to be something that those silent stone walls of Oxford heart were built to foster, and something that the surrounding "Green and Pleasant Land" was glad to house, shelter and nurture.
But just as Medieval Oxford was built to be part of a wider Christendom, and English Medieval History can be taught in that wider context- as one example of Europe at that time, so Oxford of my childhood was a Univeristy and a town that was part of an Empire on which the sun never set. [ I have only recently discovered why there was a Museum called "Pitt Rivers" with things from all over the world just off the University Parks].
But that Britain was already in retreat.. I discovered today that when I met the writer Han Suyin on a train between Dover and London in January 1966 she had been in Paris where she met Andre Malraux, and was on her way shortly to go to meet Bertrand Russell. It is my thesis that these kind of "front-line" thinkers from the inter-war generation were part of a "Lost Generation" of Western thought, lost after 1945 by an age that just did not dare to tackle the challenge of the inadequacies in Western Civilization that had led to World Chaos and the Second World War, but retreated to Victorian ideas and models that had seemed to work OK, particularly the kind of State intervention advocated by the Labour Party, inspired by the recent successes of the German model pre 1900.
It is strange how this chance encounter has assumed great significance for me over the last couple of months- especially since I have discovered that Han Suyin is still alive at 93 and adding. When I was able to share my enthusiasm for History with pupils that was foremost, and since retirement I have tried to write up some contibutions which I think are original and hopefully useful. But having decided that really that "journey" of 55 years or so is now over, I have been thinking of this hour or so spent with this Eurasian doctor/writer- talking with me in between Malraux and Russell, and saying to me "Young man you have a real sense of history".
It was many years before I started to read Han Suyin but I could understand why we had so much in common for we are both people whose birth and circumstances have really shaped them into being neither "them" nor "Us", but trying to pursue an over-arching and unifying understanding of the Past that can allow everybody to feel themselves to be a stakeholder in the Present- and our Future project.
It is the absence of a Future project that makes the Past so dead to children. Too much History just tries to explain why things are as they are, and not to show what they perhaps could be.
Anyway.. I get told off for writing too much.. And I note that most of Han Suyin's books are now out of print.
Thanks however for the encouragement.. I must write to Han Suyin and say that. Such things have been rare- apart from my pupils.
Cass -
Message 6
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 17th May 2011
Oops.. I thought I had aborted that first one..
Cass -
Message 7
Posted by alanpatten (U1866183) on Tuesday, 17th May 2011
Not just history I'm afraid.
English, Mathematics, Geography, Courtesy.
Only the other day I stood in a queue whilst a checkout operator tried to calculate 10% off an item?
Regards...............Alan -
Message 8
Posted by TheodericAur (U14260004) on Tuesday, 17th May 2011
Hi alanpatten:
I would recommend that you go into a shop in a power cut and see pandemonium break out.
The last time this happened to me the shop assistances wwere dashing around looking for hand held calculators to work out the change........
(I like the Courtesy jibe)
Kind Regards - TA -
Message 9
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Tuesday, 17th May 2011
But that Britain was already in retreatÌý
In the 1960s there was a reaction to the perceived '1066-And-All-That' style of history teaching in the UK which concentrated on learning by rote such things as dry lists of the Kings of England etc. This didn't seem to be up to the challenges of the 20th Century and a UK completely altered by 2 world wars. The reactors, however, seem to have gone far too far in the opposite direction and very quickly too. As long ago as the early 1990s, for example, some professors were concerned that there were now 'History graduates' in the UK who had studied only Hitler at GCSE and had studied only Hitler at A' Level and had again studied only Hitler as undergraduates. -
Message 10
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 17th May 2011
Our son works in a shop and is proud of his ability to work things out in his head.. But he tells me that people just do not believe that he has done so and habitually insist on watching him repeat the whole process with a calculator.
Cass -
Message 11
Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Tuesday, 17th May 2011
Vissar
Exactly!
Ramming dry historical facts down the throats of pupils will not induce interest into their young minds, but neither will just one specific area or epoch.
The subject needs to be broad and made interesting. It needs to feed their curiosity and make them want to learn more.
My idea was to write history as fictional short stories woven around factual events and characters. Despite xboxes, playstations and such, I find that children/young adults still like to read adventure, and so I tried to get them interested in history in this way. It worked with the few that I know, and that made it worthwhile.
Regards, Rooster -
Message 12
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 17th May 2011
Vizzer
To some degree the whole approach to History in education had been- as Professor Plumb said- to educate people for government as part of the "establishment" .
In order that the "establishment" could run things, it was necessary to teach those who were governed (a) some understanding of the processes by which they were governed, (b) the kind of issues that governments had been faced with over the years, (c) and the way that England's parliamentary tradition had become the backbone of the strength of Great Britain and a process of political evolution that would finally create this new, moral and managed reality as the world grew out of wars, and Imperialism, and exploitation, and booms and slumps etc.
Back in c1828 T.B. Macaulay had predicted that once really well educated people like himself were admitted to Parliament they would be able to solve all the problems of the day in accordance with the ideas that had been formulated by British writers in the previous couple of generations..
It took a long time, but, as Andrew Neale said in a recent TV programme, with Secondary Education for all, and a ladder of opportunity to University there would finally be a meritocratic rule in the post-war world. And secondary history could show just how much "the masses" owed to the whole story of domestic reform which reached its climax- and the end of evolution- in the Welfare State and the new domestic and international mechanisms for world peace and economic stability. Their job as citizens was a limited one, and it could be envisaged in 1961 that One Party Democracy would suffice for the UK from now on.
I started my latest "book" with a reference to "History of the World" I was given in Christmas 1955. This was a second edition, the first having been published during the war: and this one was produced in 1951, the year when the Festival of Britain tried to give a popular view of the Present in the context of the Past and the Future.
Before the title page it has a quote from H.A.L.Fisher "The fact of progress is written plain and large on the page of history; but progress is not a law of nature. The ground gained by one generation can be lost by the next."
But though the editor could write "Nowadays everyone wants to know something about the diverse peoples of the world and to appreciate their traditions and their hopes".. I am not sure how many people were actually prepared to read through the almost 1,000 pages of small print.
The editor was probably right, however, in saying near the end:
"Resistance to the Axis had been encouraged by visions of "Utopia" round the corner. Wonderful results had been promised from the future development of atomic energy.. On both sides of the Iron Curtain scientific progress helped to make planning a part of state development.. Individual initiative crumbled as the "state-servant" relieved parents of the care of children, and parents were controlled by ever-growing masses of regulations enforced by officials armed with ever-growing powers. As their eyes and ears were assaulted by continuous and concentrated publicity, men and women began to accept propaganda as truth. They acquired the mass-mind, which is the suresy support of the totalitarian ruler."
In fact by the Sixties being ruled by a domestic "British RaJ" establishment was no more welcome to many of the British people who were ruled over than Raj rule had been in the sub-continent . . And the immigration of some of those "citizens" of the old Empire ,along with Socialist historians, introduced new challenges to the "established facts" of English/British history.
And- as I have suggested in my 1973 thread- after it became obvious to the Sixties generation that the "managers" were not up to the job they claimed to be able to do- the international situation quickly became one that they could not manage at all, merely react to.
As so many pupils and young people habitually say- the adult world thus confesses to being effectively "useless" in providing any sense of security and optimism for the Future.
In fact they are told that they are the Future.. The Future for them will be a DIY job just reacting to circumstance..so why should they learn anything from such a useless adult world?
Cass -
Message 13
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Wednesday, 18th May 2011
It's not just in this country this happens. We spent Christmas in SC US. I mentioned visiting the Little Big Horn some years back and seeing where George Armstrong Custer died. Two senior Highschool students looked at me and said. "Who?" I explained and they had no idea what had happened, or no real understanding of the Indian Wars, as it was hardly covered in US History classes.
GF -
Message 14
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Wednesday, 18th May 2011
That's a bit mind-boggling, rooster. It is hard for me to understand that sixth formers could not know who Churchill is, especially if those sixth-formers are studying A-Level history....
My daughter is currently doing GCSE History, with the intention of doing it for A Level, and her understanding of history is pretty good. She knows who Churchill is, and that he was prime minister during the Second World War. But she did say that they've yet to study WWII, which I find quite surprising.
However, I do feel that during the five years of lower school, the teaching of history doesn't really cover the entire history of the country. It tends to hop, skip and jump, without following a linear method. For example, kids learn about William the Conqueror, the Tudors, the First World War, and during the GCSE years, things like Britain's role in Palestine, the civil rights movement in the US, and the Russian revolution. There are a lot of gaps in English history in that process, IMHO. -
Message 15
Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Wednesday, 18th May 2011
Shivfan
Nevertheless, what I posted is completely true.
I'm not too familiar with educational ethics, but perhaps in different areas of the country history is seen as not so important and is therefore only touched upon.
I'm not too concerned with what they teach, but how they teach it. I found history very boring in my early years at school, but then my teacher was of the old school, and dealt mainly with dates and the monarchy.
As I moved up however, I had a new teacher, who delivered his lessons in such a way that he brought history alive and actually got the class participating with him. I for one left the lessons looking forward to the next and I have him to thank for instilling in me a respect for history.
As I said in my first post, history needs to be made interesting to the pupil, and to leave him/her wanting more.
Rooster -
Message 16
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 18th May 2011
Looking back to my own experience of being taught history I have perhaps been unfair to my teachers- but ,when in my final year of my history degree I looked at a long-term prejudice against being a history teacher, I rationalised that that prejudice stemmed certainly in part from a feeling that I had seen too much of how the subject could be taught badly- and therefore must have some idea of how it should be better.
In fairness to the teachers, however: (a) perhaps as the B Class we were given teachers who were not historians and really knew little more than how to read the text book through with us and treat it as a kind of Bible, though some of them were very ancient (the books)
(b) Obviously in 1955 the 2WW had been a major trauma for their generation. One of the teachers had been a prisoner of war for about 4 years; others perhaps had had their education disrupted by the war, or by the fast-tracking process.
(c) Though I was perhaps a particular challenge I do not think that my grammar school really had much idea of relating to 11+ boys from "The Working Class", since- though the school had been founded back in the 1880's to bring Town and Gown together, back then that was Oxford Town of J.R. Green's England historically governed by the top members of the Guilds etc- nobody lower than what was by then being called Lower Middle Class. For such people since at least the Age of the Revolution the "masses" had been regarded as at least potentially terrifying.
All of this came together when our Gestapo-infected English teacher was teaching us the Anglo-Saxon invasions from an old text-book that had the AS arriving, massacring the British and tearing down the Roman villas. I just sat at the back wondering whether the people who thought this was possible had ever had to work with their own hands and labour. If you have actually built things you know that you need a very good reason to go to all the hard work and labour involved in destroying them.. The AS would have had much more pressing things to do actually "earning their own living"..and tackling their own building and constructing needs..And they had their own simple and effective building traditions that did not require Roman materials. Even in the French Revolution the masses only pulled down the Bastille totally because it was a very useful source of free building material, not because it was a hated symbol of a repressive regime.
But the point of the 11+ grammar school was to achieve the dream explored in the late Forties film "The Guinnea Pig" in which John Mills (?) plays a Working Class boy who gets the chance to go to a public school and become part of the new Meritocratic Class that would just run the show in "the best possible taste" and according to Science which of course had no human foibles and weaknesses.
But at least back then there was still the vision and ideal of the Universal Man of the Renaissance, and such a concept as general knowledge.. From quiz programmes (that I do not watch- so perhaps I am unfair) any kind of general knowledge now seems to be limited to who has done what to whom and why in TV soaps.
Cass -
Message 17
Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Wednesday, 18th May 2011
Cass, whatever has this got to do with history lessons in 2011.
Try' Eggheads' or 'Mastermind' for quizzes, you may be surprised at how much people do know. -
Message 18
Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Wednesday, 18th May 2011
Shivfan
Nevertheless, what I posted is completely true.
I'm not too familiar with educational ethics, but perhaps in different areas of the country history is seen as not so important and is therefore only touched upon.
I'm not too concerned with what they teach, but how they teach it. I found history very boring in my early years at school, but then my teacher was of the old school, and dealt mainly with dates and the monarchy.
As I moved up however, I had a new teacher, who delivered his lessons in such a way that he brought history alive and actually got the class participating with him. I for one left the lessons looking forward to the next and I have him to thank for instilling in me a respect for history.
As I said in my first post, history needs to be made interesting to the pupil, and to leave him/her wanting more.
Rooster Ìý Total agreement here.
One of my sons had a teacher who is a medieval historian & who fired her classes with a desire to learn more for themselves. No surprise when son went on to study history at university, with economics - Scottish university where this was possible. -
Message 19
Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Wednesday, 18th May 2011
In reply to Sleepyrooster:
When I asked them what they had learned about their own country's history, I was shocked by how little they knew. For instance, none of them knew who Winston Churchill was. Then, according to these 'well educated' young people, Lord Nelson was a pirate, General Montgommery was a golfer...Ìý
They don´t know about Churchill, but:
posted by Vizzer:
As long ago as the early 1990s, for example, some professors were concerned that there were now 'History graduates' in the UK who had studied only Hitler at GCSE and had studied only Hitler at A' Level and had again studied only Hitler as undergraduates.Ìý
The first quote displayes the ignorance of ones own countries history, the second one gives an insight about the obsessive interest in Hitler and the Nazis, well served by the British tabloid press.
Remarkably! -
Message 20
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 18th May 2011
SilverJenny
Well the point was being made that History lessons have less of a real and continuous narrative than in the Fifties and the text-books that were written for that age. And many of the comments about present teaching are based upon comparative rather than absolute values.
Subsequently to that clear narrative period school history caught up with the revisionism of the Lewis Namier school of history from the twenties which held that really the key to everything is documentary analysis. And with the comprehensive system faced with adapting to an aspiration create a classless, British rather than "English", multi-racial and multi-ethnic reality the old historical narrative could not cope.
When I started teaching in a large comprehensive school in 1967 the History Department of eight had no common History curriculum for the Lower School, apart from just start and end dates between which we could pick any items from world history that we wanted to teach. The Head of Department only taught the Sixth Form. At the end of my first year I negotiated at least some agreed common core subjects with my colleagues based upon pupil and staff interest and relevance, since I thought that it was useful to share.
But both then and in later school-based History curriculum developments the challenge of bringing any kind of narrative up to the main events of the twentieth century in just three years of Secondary Education was very daunting. For only a proportion of pupils took and take History up to 16+.
But more generally it was a Big Bang New Age reality in which precedent and tradition could be swept away and made irrelevant by Science and Technology the value of History was seen to be very much bound up with the forensic skills that Historians had developed to look through and beyond the evidence. This skills-based approach leant itself to cherry picking random bits of the Past and teaching an essentially journalistic approach based upon looking just at the trees and not the forest.
The National Curriculum tried to address this Big Bang diversity in the late 1980's and set certain core elements to make sure that key elements of British History are covered.
As for history teaching in 2011 I am now somewhat out of touch. But History was a very popular subject in my last school, with a high take up at GCSE, and at one time not only two History A level Courses but also an Economic History paper in the Economics course that I taught. Following the retirement of my Medievalist colleague last year I think that that course has finally been dropped- since she was not replaced.
As for my remark about quizzies it was specifically aimed at general knowledge..
And what surprises me is not how much people know but how often people do not seem to understand. Knowledge without understanding was so much a part of that "read, learn and inwardly digest" tradition.
Cass -
Message 21
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Wednesday, 18th May 2011
The first quote displayes the ignorance of ones own countries history, the second one gives an insight about the obsessive interest in Hitler and the Nazis, well served by the British tabloid press.Ìý
I'm always happy to blame the tabloid press for the ills of society but I'm not entirely sure they can be in this case. I'd be more inclined to put it down to the idea, prevalent across much of the curriculum, that young people can only be engaged by topics that are 'relevant' and in this case that means ones which are comparatively recent and feel at least a little familiar. The flaws in this argument don't really need highlighting but the result is youngsters bored rigid with endless detail about the rise of Nazis whom they see either as distant and alien or sometimes as role models.
This philosophy has spilled into the English syllabus as well with the inclusion of a succession of issue based texts of varying degrees of quality. Some are so depressing and sordid that they'd make me consider slashing my wrists.
Across the board, the unwillingness to expose pupils to wide range of experiences of the past and the present is positively patronising and, sadly, it's the least able who suffer most from this. -
Message 22
Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Wednesday, 18th May 2011
ferval,
I know that there is a difference between the tabloid press and the curriculum to consider.
The flaws in this argument don't really need highlighting but the result is youngsters bored rigid with endless detail about the rise of Nazis whom they see either as distant and alien or sometimes as role models.Ìý
I got that point. I´d just add to this that they might be bored because they heard it so often and the tabloid press has been very eager to draw similarities to this "Nazi" theme to push the selling of their papers.
It one would take the bother to draw an assessment between the rise of fascist movements on the European continent in the 1920s and 1930s to the BUF and Oswald Mosley to see the differences and the similarities in its developments, achievments and - for Britain - its failing, it could bring up a new path for understanding.
Mosley and the BUF may be not that topic for he was just something like a puppet, but when I´ve read in Andrew Marr´s book (The Making of Modern Britain), that on Mosley´s peak of public support in the midd 1930s, the numbers were among 10 to 20,000, which is of course a small rate in compare to the whole population of the UK at that time, but it goes together with the developments of fascist organizations across Europe in the 1930s.
I haven´t noticed that the BUF was as much a matter for the tabloid press as Hitler was, well to say that until the BNP became a topic in recent years.
It´s the way one is dealing with history and how narrow or wide the focus on a historical topics is provided.
Maybe this could be a way to theach them that the Nazis were all but no aliens or stupid actors in war films. They were most ordinary people, and that is the point because those members of the BUF were ordinary people as well. What they had in common was their racistical ideas they followed, but moreover that they were unemployed and put the blame for their misfortune upon "foreigners", to have and use a scapegoat.
I think, that to understand history it is important to learn about the social background of the people of the times concerning as well. Otherwise it is just to learn facts according to the timeline they happened, but this gives no understand for why they happened.
Regards,
Thomas -
Message 23
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 18th May 2011
Thomas
As you know one of my major obsessions is the way that the story of the inter-war period tends to get ignored- apart from "the three dictators"..
I am not sure whether the World Economic Conference held in the Natural History Museum at the height of the World Chaos of the early Thirties was in the collective memory until I mentioned it in letters to the political establishment a few years ago-- and Gordon Brown hosted a new one in Docklands.
Moreover at the time of the Iraq War journalists described the peace rallies as without precedent, seemingly oblivious of the great rallies of the Peace Pledge Union inspired by Dick Sheppard.
Re Mosley- I think I have mentioned before the fact that Dick Sheppard attended one of his rallies as a friend of Mosley's aristocratic mother, and wrote one of his stinging letters to the Press.
Re the growth of Nazism there is that famous quote that for evil to triumph it is enough that good men do nothing.. But, whereas the inter-war period was one when G.K. Chesterton could say that the times really needed those who would speak up for "the little man"- as William Cobbett had done- the post-war culture was and continues to be a "best leave it to the professionals" one- in which education tends to be seen as "not for life" but for fixing and fitting people to a job, profession, and limited function as one cog in the Economy.
But professionalism has become too often synonimous with dodges, cutting corners, and trying to serve the self-interest of the professional rather than the customer/ client.. The most common use of the word may be in "professional foul".
Cass -
Message 24
Posted by Tasty (U14660579) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
Message 1.ÌýPosted by Sleepyrooster I am appalled by the lack of British history taught nowadays in our schools. . . .I don't know why our youngsters are no longer taught in-depth British history in our schools; could it be another product of 'multi-culturalism' and political correctness, or is the educational establishment ashamed of our history?Ìý
Hello Sleepyrooster,
I'm afraid it's all three "multiculturalism' and political correctness, educational establishment ashamed of our history".
I think having pride in this country stems from learning about its past glories (and mistakes) and extolling the virtues it encouraged throughout the world.Ìý
Ah, but you forget, the purpose of the multicultural agenda is to destroy the cultures of white Europeans and what better way than to erode the education system until none of the next generation know where they came from or where they will be manipulated into going. Their sick project is working well as society fragments and its past cultural unity is fragmented and destroyed, as is the family unit and national sense of history and achievements. -
Message 25
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
Tasty, perhaps you could describe what 'cultural unity' would look like in the context of the UK and its constituent parts and then point to a time in the past when this existed.
-
Message 26
Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
In reply to Tasty:
I'm afraid it's all three "multiculturalism' and political correctness, educational establishment ashamed of our history".Ìý
This is, to say the least, an assertion and as you wrote further:
Ah, but you forget, the purpose of the multicultural agenda is to destroy the cultures of white Europeans and what better way than to erode the education system until none of the next generation know where they came from or where they will be manipulated into going.Ìý
it is as well an expression of bitter considerations.
It´s easy to put the blame on institutions and exclude the people themselves, like the families and their way to raise their children.
If one is most interested in trash TV and relies on what they´re talking about in certain shows, so it´s their own fault.
Their sick project is working well as society fragments and its past cultural unity is fragmented and destroyed, as is the family unit and national sense of history and achievements.Ìý
It´s the fault of the society as well if it is going to follow that "project" unquestioned.
Everybody has his right to resist, but less seem to use that right, according to your post. -
Message 27
Posted by Tasty (U14660579) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
Message 26 in reply to message 24. Posted by Thomas_II It's easy to put the blame on institutions and exclude the people themselves, like the families and their way to raise their children.
If one is most interested in trash TV and relies on what they´re talking about in certain shows, so it's their own fault.Ìý
True, but if they are being bred to become just a mindless consumers of pap TV and dumbed down material, which ends in their kids growing up to be unquestioning averages, is it not good to warn of the consequences this will have in a debasing society?
Their sick project is working well as society fragments and its past cultural unity is fragmented and destroyed, as is the family unit and national sense of history and achievements. It's the fault of the society as well if it is going to follow that "project" unquestioned.Ìý Ìý
What if most in society are obliviously unaware of their lives being manipulated and dumbed down and controlled?
Everybody has his right to resist, but less seem to use that right, according to your post. Ìý
But that is the point. An unthinking mass of humanity is much more easy to manipulate that one that is educated or at least learns to question the TV an media "reality" they are fed.
If the kids nowadays don't even know their own history, then what is the foundation to their identity? The mindless rubbish they are fed as consumers on TV? -
Message 28
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
I quizzed my daughter, and interestingly, she had learnt nothing in school about Nelson, Raleigh and Montgomery....
-
Message 29
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
I feel that ferval's point about "Cultural unity within the UK" goes to the heart of this debate.
It is my thesis that the evolution of England was based since about the 7th or 8th century on a acceptance of "English Peace" within those AS Kingdoms that had managed to push back the Viking invasions into the Danelaw, which-as the name implies- ran its affairs on different lines to the need to observe and uphold "The King's Peace".
The ability of the English to work together to develop as a Commonweal in the interest of the whole population underpinned the evolution of that Kingdom until in 1763 it emerged- now in a Union with Scotland that was partly brought within that Commonweal- as arguably the first ever truly global power.
The subsequent Union with Ireland was brought about in the midst of what was almost as much of a World War as that of 1914-18, and the whole process of creating some kind of greater "Britishness" became essential, if the UK was to survive and flourish..
The way to do this was pioneered by Dr. Thomas Arnold who began the Public School revolution as Headmaster of Rugby School. The pre-existing format of boarding houses etc made it possible to bring together boys from all parts of the British Isles- and indeed later the British Empire- and through the work and play within the school life to create the leaders and governors of a new Britain..
Later in the 1860's when Dr Arnold's son Matthew was Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools and was charged with promoting an educational revolution the example of greater German and Italian Nationalism seemed to underline the fact that, once again Britain had been ahead of the game in merging small countries to form one greater one.
Hence the general overhaul of education in England and Wales in the 1860's embraced much of that British idea, and the new and reformed grammar schools very consciously modelled themselves upon the public schools, whose alumni regarded themselves as tasked with leadership roles in the ongoing story of British evolution.
Of course there were "fissiparous tendencies", and both before and during the First World War some of these challenged the "national project" and formulated their own.
After the IWW confidence in that project had been badly damaged, and in hindsight the lack of firm direction was interpreted as one of the reasons why events drifted towards the 2WW. So after 1945 it was "back to basics" and a new start. Hence the Festival of Britain in 1951. After all it could be felt, as Lord Clarke said of England almost a thousand years before, Great Britain had survived the "Darkest Hours" "by the skin of our teeth": and the idea of the survivability of separate parts of the UK in a dangerous world was not very plausible.
But the hopes of that new start were not sustained, because- though the "Middle Class" could often move around at will within the UK, and in fact in the developing global economy thanks to educationx3, the realities faced by "the common people" were often much more circumscribed and disadvantaged.
Cass -
Message 30
Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
Friends
It is my belief that when a country begins to lose its national identity, it is a downward spiral toward anarchy and self indulgence.
Years ago, when our children were taught to feel proud about their history, they tended to respect our way of life and their elders more.
Nowadays, they learn very little about our own heritage, and therefore have nothing to identify their past with.
It seems that the educational establishment is coerced somehow to teach foreign history instead of British. Multiculturism and political correctness has undoubtably forced their hand.
Only when we get back to teaching our children that they are the product of this country, and let them learn about the great people who forged this nations past, can we hope for them to have pride in Great Britain.
I believe that this intransigence on behalf of the education system has caused much of the who-cares-a-damn mentality among our young people.
Rooster -
Message 31
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
Sleepyrooster
I think that it those three names Shivfan mentioned are significant - Nelson, Raleigh and Montgomery..
Though Raleigh was a multi-faceted man he has been featured in history as an Elizabethan Sea-dog and adventurer, while the other two were predominantly important as war leaders..
While war is very much anathema to me, I do believe that there is a real tendency to overlook the fact that people often have to, and have had to, face up to the fact that freedoms, rights and liberties- of the kind that so many people lay claim to as "Universal Human Rights"- only exist because people have fought for them, and have often been prepared to "pay the ultimate price" to achieve them for others.
It is a fine balance between glorifying war.. and giving such people their due, and thus equipping a new generation to be able to rise to the challenge of their own times.
Hence I know that Shivfan will be familiar with my revisionist history of the British involvement in the African slave trade that postulates that the small African states, whose Kings made treaty alliances with King Charles II, with trade rights that he handed to the Royal Africa Company, were not actually living through "Black History" but a common history with these islands.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were indeed times of frequent wars. But the main reason for those wars- as had been the struggle against the Spanish Armada- as far as Engand was concerned- was to preserve the Liberties of Englishmen against the claims of great continental powers over this realm, including the powers of the Papacy and then the Counter-Reformation- even in its manifestation under Louis XIV.
But if England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland were, and had been, relatively poor, weak and backward countries on the Atlantic fringes of the European continent, much the same was true of those African States in the Sub-Saharan region where the Ocean blocked any further retreat from the "Superpowers" that had emerged in the Mediterranean over thousands of years, and which had "mined" sub-Saharan Africa for slaves for all of that time.
Until the opening up of the Atlantic these Kingdoms were stuck in a "dead end", marginalised and "taxed" by interior peoples who provided slaves for the great Sub-Saharan states like Mali and Ghana.
Stuck that is until West European traders made it possible to become stronger and more independent, to exchange those condemned to slavery by their legal systems for goods that would promote and engender economic growth and military strength. Then they could refuse to pay the tribute in slaves to the interior states that their ancestors had done, and if the interior peoples like the Ashanti came down to make war on them, and take their slaves as prisoners of war, then they would fight them and enslave the slavers- and sell them to the Europeans too.
In other words the African wars, like the English wars, were wars of liberation not enrichment: though only by increasing wealth could they not only pay for the past wars, but be ready for their enemies who would undoubtedly try harder next time.
During the first half of the Eighteenth Century the Muslim states just south of the Sahara launched a number of "intafadas" in order to try to re-establish their old power and authority. But the Islamic world generally was losing its strength as the result of the opening up of the ocean routes that cut out "piggy in the middle".
Of course this is not how it looked to William Wilberforce, and therefore how the history is usually written when based upon the large amount of material that his campaigning organisation collected and distributed. But his view- much more politically correct- only really makes sense if you believe that, as Wilberforce said in his great initial speech, Africans had been brought down to a level lower than the apes: and, as they obviously were by implication, incapable of much, the fault and blame must be assumed by Britain.
Cass -
Message 32
Posted by Mike Alexander (U1706714) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
Years ago, when our children were taught to feel proud about their history...Ìý
Quite unjustifiably proud, in many respects. There's plenty to be ashamed of in British History.
...they tended to respect our way of life and their elders moreÌý
I don't think there's any real evidence for this - strikes me as a symptom of rose-tinted spectacles. I've heard people tell me how they terrorised their teachers, dangling them out of the windows by their ankles - in the 1950s. What's changed is the extent to which this sort of thing is blown out of all proportion by the media.
It seems that the educational establishment is coerced somehow to teach foreign history instead of British...Ìý
Surely we should be teaching both? Personally, I studied British history from George III through to WWI, continental history from the French revolution through to the unification of Italy, plus the American War of Independence. Not exhaustive, but a good balance for a GCE (as it was then) syllabus.
...let them learn about the great people who forged this nations pastÌý
Well here's the problem - nobody's really naive enough to believe that Great People alone make history. All sorts of other factors - economic, cultural, geographical - come into play. In the past the role of individuals and bogus ideas such as "British innovative genius" have been overplayed, and factors such as ruthless exploitation and military brutality and simple luck have been downplayed. -
Message 33
Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
Mike
I beg to differ, but respect your right to an opinion.
However, why should you feel ashamed of your mother country?
Were you not raised here? Why be so belligerent?
One does not hear other nationalities berate their homeland - quite the reverse in fact!
I am not ashamed of my heritage, I am a proud Englishman, and I do not wear rose-tinted glasses, I rely on facts for my outlook.
Yes, we should teach our children foreign history, but not at the expense of our own.
And I agree that not only people make great nations, it does take other factors too. But without great leaders, scientists, and the will of common folk, no nation would ever rise above the mire. -
Message 34
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
Sleepyrooster
I think it was Andre Malraux who wrote a novel entitled " La Condition Humaine" on the basis of his involvement in the Thirties in various liberation struggles, including the International Brigade in Spain.
There is a sound reason why the English believe in the right to be judged by "our peers"- those who live by the same standards and conditions as we do and are qualified to say when we are guilty of crimes and not just the human strengths and weaknesses of our place and time.
As the Queen said with the benefit of historical hindsight we could all "do better".. But that is assuming that with the passage of time we are wiser and more capable. This is what makes that school report comment "could have done better" in effect meaningless.. Hopefully a teacher can always see how a pupil could do things better- otherwise the pupil has reached the level of the teacher.
"Life is lived in the present tense with the tools we have at hand
and many a hope for the modern world was Made in England"
Cass -
Message 35
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
It's not just in this country this happens. We spent Christmas in SC US. I mentioned visiting the Little Big Horn some years back and seeing where George Armstrong Custer died. Two senior Highschool students looked at me and said. "Who?" I explained and they had no idea what had happened, or no real understanding of the Indian Wars, as it was hardly covered in US History classes.Ìý
Yes - it's not just in the UK. For example there was a lecturer from a prestigious US university who was interviewed on a Radio 4 program a few months ago ('In Our Time' or 'Thinking Allowed' or some such) and who related how an undergraduate during a seminar had asked the following question:
"So this phrase we use - 'World War Two' - does this imply that there was also a 'World War One'?" -
Message 36
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
Vizzer
I think that Niall Ferguson (Oxford Don amongst other things) wrote this story in "Colossus", which was closely connected to a spell at teaching at the Harvard Business School.
Cass -
Message 37
Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
Cass
I agree entirely.
Without the influence of Britain, I do believe the world would have been a darker place; for without our influence many countries would have taken longer to achieve true civilisation. Of course, we sometimes made mistakes, but on the whole we eventually liberated people and put them on the road to democracy. (although a few have reverted back to their bad old ways since)
Anyway, I'm off to the Canary Isles tomorrow for ten days holiday, and when I return I'll be very interested to see if this thread developes any further.
Rooster -
Message 38
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
Without the influence of Britain, I do believe the world would have been a darker place; for without our influence many countries would have taken longer to achieve true civilisation.Ìý
Sleepy, if you read this before you head off, and do have a great time, that statement is frankly nonsensical. Were there to have been no Britain, then every other variable that has contributed to history would necessarily have been different and who knows what the outcome would have been, not least that this discussion would never have taken place.
It makes as much sense as saying "Without the evolution of the human race, it would have taken longer to achieve true civilisation".
Have you decided yet what your' cultural unity' looks like? -
Message 39
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
Mind you to go back to the OP, by the end of my History O Level course I do not think that we had got beyond 1815. Then my History A Level covered English History 1660- 1815 and European History 1648- 1815.. Fortunately I also did A Level English Economic and Social History 1100- 1914, and in A Level Economics English Economic History 1914-1960. But this I think was fairly unusual.
So we should not perhaps exaggerate just how much British History was formally covered.
But there were great TV series on the Great War and the Lost Peace- that later as a teacher I had access to in the LEA film library.. And Harold Wilson's Open University initiative was in the mood of the time, which looked to public broadcasting as also part of those assets available for the public to make personal progress in other ways than mere materialism.
I deliberately chose a History degree course that would give me the widest possible grounding in the British, European and World History that was relevant to the world of the Sixties.
But as a teacher it was obvious - as my school had not managed to even get me to the Twentieth Century after 8 years- that it was not possible to try to cover even the old school curriculum and then just add on bits. Children need to understand the History of the Age that they are living in and will live in and forge.
And this does mean writing "alternative history" because their time is not that of my generation- and it would seem that of many on the History MB.
But I agree that children need to be empowered by positive models of what people like themselves have achieved in the past. We are very much aware of the impact of the lack of such models on the academic attainment of boys and youths of Afro-Caribbean descent: but it seems that the kind of trend of the deliberate pursuit of moral indignation started by William Wilberforce is leaving a much wider section of British boys and youths without positive models who can really inspire them to "go and do likewise".
Cass -
Message 40
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
Cass, from your experience, would you see any value in history teaching being more thematic? Would looking at different aspects of life over time, for example the experience of childhood, the development of empires, the influence of religion, domination and resistance etc be any more engaging?
-
Message 41
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
ferval
I do not believe that sleepyrooster was postulating a world with no Britain, just a world in which Britain had no direct influence and was not an important example of success that inspired widespread emulation at the period when the World seemed to be making the most progress.
It is not totally idle to postulate- as people have had to do over the years- on just what would have happened had English Liberties been crushed by Phillip of Spain, or Louis XIV, or Napoleon, or Kaiser Willhem or Hitler.. These were not mere hypothetical questions but things that people had to weigh up when facing the decisions to put their lives- or those of their loved ones- on the line.
And History is the only thing we really have to guide us in this.. So I think that it is significant that in English History "massacres" rarely seem to amount to more than at most two dozen people, and the killings of Bloody Mary (really very small change for most other countries it seems- just a couple a week for three years) left a huge impact upon the English consciousness for centuries.
The History of my wife's France by comparison is steeped in blood, and it is interesting for an Englishman to read the verdict of Eric Hobsbawm who shows his foreign roots in saying that the French Revolution probably cost no more than 28,000 lives. Not much, he says, to achieve a major turning point in History. Too much for the English- I say.
Cass -
Message 42
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 19th May 2011
ferval
Thanks for asking.. I do believe that the History teacher does need to have a grasp of unifying themes that are relevant to today and can be brought out in the study of the Past..
Thus when I finished my first major "book" I ended up taking many themes that spiral around each other almost like DNA.. I called it "English Peace" and to my mind it answered the question of how it is possible of an individual to live in the modern world.
I do not, however, think that thematic history is good for teaching to children, because children can relate to stories "in the round". And what you really want them to do is to "meet" real people and real human situations, which though different in circumstances show that fundamental Historical conviction that there are no closed doors to our understanding. That people are as they have always been, and those that are different to us in the past are only as different to us as people we might encounter in our Present or Future.
So I agree with Sleepyrooster that storytelling is an important element.. In fact one of my great memories from teaching was one hot summer afternoon a class of 14-15 year old girls, who were due to have a General RE lesson, just asked me to tell them a story (in this case a fictional one).. It seemed like a good idea..
I suspect that they had already taken the Short Course GCSE Exam by then- and as usual most of my pupils got grades A and A*.. So I sat on a desk to tell them a story - an ancient Chinese one probably. And these South London adolescents just immediately regressed to primary school, as they lay down on the carpeted floor, and closed their eyes, remaining in this childish regression for the next 35 minutes. I felt very privileged at their abandonment of teenage modesty as probably lots of knickers were on show if I had been inclined to look.
But it your themes are really ones that cut through and across the centuries they can be constantly developed and reinforced as you teach the pupils over the years.
In fact when I was finishing English Peace I dug out the references that I was given for my first job, and our daughter remarked how little I had changed. since even school days. There in my Tutor's comment in my PDCE year was the observation that I obviously has a taste for controversial discussion and what he saw in my teaching was that my Caerphilly boys responded to my methodology and became more confident in thinking for themselves and coming up with suggestions to my at times leading questions, or playing "Devils advocate".
So- as I am sure you found yourself in your own teaching- you end up with the pupils, who you have helped to develop a line of understanding that throws a light upon the world of their observation and experience, seeing an application of the concept that has not occurred to you.
But sometimes it works the other way. One pupil, who wrote to me once she was herself a history teacher , was kind enough to say that she was a history teacher because of me.. And, though we never spoke about it, I am sure that something I said, and our eye contact at that moment was key.
We were studying Apartheid, and this pupil was a girl from an Afro-Caribbean family with brothers giving her parents some grief.
That day I read the parts of Chief Luthuli's "Let My People Go" and especially the great Freedom Charter.. I pointed out that it specifically said that South Africa was the land of all the people of SA , black, white and coloured: that those who talked in terms of "Black Power", "Black Majority rule", and reclaiming SA for the black people found no support here. In fact to support such ideas would be just the same as supporting the expulsion of black people from Britain.
The tides of history have moved people for different reasosn, but, when people have made a place their home, then it is their home, even when like the Boers their forefathers had come from another land/continent several centuries before.. Everyone has to take the situation forward from where it actually is.
Cass -
Message 43
Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Saturday, 21st May 2011
Lovely story, Cass and especially that your former pupil told you that she had become a history church becuase of you.
If you had the chance to rewrite the history curriculum from scratch, is there anything you would like to change, omit or add?. -
Message 44
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 21st May 2011
Silver Jenny
Actually you have made me think of another moment early on in my three years teaching the most able group of 11-14 year old historians - which included the most able individual historian that I taught in 37 years- that illustrates -I think- my point about bringing out themes.
It was perhaps just as well that I retired before my most able pupil started examination courses.. and she found the adjustment to my colleague's approach difficult.. But she should have finished her history degree at Oxford last summer.. and perhaps can now return to being more creative than examination systems allow.
Our own school curriculum tackled some Anglo-Saxon background before getting to the whole question of the contest for the throne in 1066. And by Tuesday 11 September 2001 I I had completed the build up to the military action of 1066. But I went into an RE lesson second period in the afternoon to find the 15 year old girls watching the live pictures from the Twin Towers. We watched together.. as they replayed those images and showed new ones.
Then I had to go along the corridor to teach these 11 year olds, and they could see by my face that something had happened. I had wondered when seeing those images whether there was anything that should be done to spread the news. But decided that people would find out soon enough.
So I told these girls that when they got home that evening they would hear and see shocking news of an attack on the USA. This was a day I suggested that would prove to be an historically defining day, like the Battle of Hastings in 1066 that we were all ready to look at in detail.. England's boast has been that she had not been successfully invaded by a foreign power since 1066, and the former US feeling of being out-of reach- except during the Cuba Missile Crisis and MAD, the US reactions to which showed their sensitivity to just the threat of an attack.
But there seemed to be nothing that we could do to impact on that situation, and the only thing we could do was just to get on with our work. In fact trying to get on with business as normally as possible had been the Blitz Spirit, and it was the British reaction to 9/11.
Fortunately the action in 1066 was able to take all of our minds away from the present uncertainty.
As for writing the history curriculum from scratch, one of my happiest periods came when I changed schools from one in which in the first two years we did Integrated Humanities, and I helped to develop courses and materials looking at the history, geography, religion and culture of Hunting, Herding and Farming etc communities.. very much along the lines of nineteenth century development anthropology. But I felt that the pupils were being short-changed because they were not meeting real history.
When I was being interviewed for my PGCE I was asked whether I wanted to teach History, or to teach children. I said that I wanted to teach children through the study of history.
So I went as Second in Department to a school where I was able to enjoy the pleasure of a really productive and cooperative relationship with my HOD. We complemented each other perfectly and when we disagreed- which was very often- each had such respect for the other that the next day both had "moved on" in their thinking until a good and superior synthesis was achieved.
Together we created not only our own history syllabus, but also our own booklets for both classwork and homework covering aspects of world history around a British core from c1066 until 1945 in the three years during which all pupils would take history. Because it was a comprehensive school these resources were produced in three "strengths" according to the various abilities of the pupils.
I think that it was some time in the mid-eighties that a new Headteacher decided that separate subjects would be replaced by Integrated Humanities and all of that work was shelved, and eventually binned. .. I think I still have some iindividual copies somewhere.
As for writing a curriculum from scratch, I once attended a study day at which this challenge was thrown out at a brainstorming session. You have a brand new school with total freedom. What would your history curriculum be?.. Most pupils I find do not like blank sheets as much as I do.. It was "Well in our school.." x infinity.
Cass -
Message 45
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 22nd May 2011
Silver Jenny
Further to that most able pupil.. and this thread.. it was one of those strange things that sometimes happen to me.
In early August we were camping in a favourite spot in the French Alps and I had a very powerful dream about Dark Age migration, visualising a folk movement across Europe with maidens with those long platts of pre-Raphaelite hair. It was so powerful that immediately after breakfast I picked up my guitar, found a tune and backing, and proceded to work on a lyric for the story of those people.
This is what I ended up with:
THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISH PEACE
1. Long ago and far away, in an age without a time
Burdened bands of folk made tracks across a northern clime.
A tide of change was running high , the order could not hold
Many would be swept away in the rush for Roman gold.
But the promised land, as wise womenfolk could see
Was a place where all could stand and work in security.
And men who bore the traces of a legionary style
Told tales of green spaces in Britannia’s Isle
2. Warrior bands and chiefs set off to test the Saxon Shore
To prove themselves as fighting men and to find out more.
They saw the wetland wilderness of the Isis and her brood
And heavy clay-based forest belts , where the Green Man roamed so rude.
And they sent back word that their folks should come by boat
Bringing beasts to restock every herd and all that they could float.
And deep within the greenery new settlements were built
Adapted to a scenery of timber, rush and silt.
3. How many generations worked there are no words to tell
For their tales are all of heroes who ventured into Hell.
But the ‘tons’ and’ hams’ and ‘vills’ they built had great fertility
For those able to labour hard as one community.
So they tamed and drained , with water-meadow , dyke and weir
And they pulled up clumps of forest stumps to leave open fields so clear
And in their halls they spoke of common law and commonweal
And their common lands and a common peace in which open wounds could heal.
4. And when the tide of violence rose in a mighty flood
Drug-eyed , mounted dragon men swooped for gold and blood.
In common cause subject and King made the Viking cease
And accept a future Danelaw would be defined by English peace
And successive English Kings , like Harold , Bill and such
Had to learn that the great men of war still must keep the common touch.
And so the realm grew stronger as the centuries unfurled
To match the threat of foreign ‘greats’ who sought to rule the World.
5. A thousand years of History is not a fairy tale
And the Angles were no angels even as Roman slaves for sale.
But life is lived in the present tense with the tools we have at hand
And many-a hope for the modern World was ‘made in England’.
And if this is to be the Age of the Common Man
There are things that that everyone needs to understand.
Freedom and security they are not granted, owned or leased.
It takes time and toil from everyone to make an English Peace.
***
When the new school year arrived that, pupil turned up in my lessons complete with a long platt of that pre-Raphaelite coloured hair: and one of the first history lessons with that class involved me giving them a copy of the lyric and singing the song to them.
I explaining that so much of this is obscured- as is so much of the life of the common people with some of the problems of writing this story as history, but outlining the evidence that the song used.
After a couple of weeks it was the practice to have a first meeting with the new parents, and I met this girl's mother. I could assure her that her daughter was doing very well, and that I had given her an A- for perhaps a first piece of homework.
In good humour she asked why the minus. So I explained that her daughter had not done the assignment that I had set, but had written a brilliant analysis based on the lyric and the lesson- the kind of thing that I could not have asked the whole class to do.
It was the kind of thing that she had to learn not to do when she got to the examination course stage. But I tried to encourage my pupils who set out to use the homework set as an excuse to do something much more thoughtful and well-researched than just the "bog-standard" as TB might have put it.
I think that the song actually brings out what I believe to be core aspects and values of English history and England's contribution to world history.
Cass
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