History is a joke

[ScatterKitty]

AIBU to wish History lessons focused less on Henry VIII (or British monarchy in general) and more on the history which led to current conflicts and issues which affect current affairs?

Was anyone taught about the Israel/Palestine situation? Or the history of India or Pakistan? Or even Windrush and UK Black history?

How am I meant to explain to my kids what's going on in the world when we were never taught and all they learn about is British monarchy, Romans etc?

I've been trying to find a decent explanation online with no luck. Can anyone help?

Unlike some others I don’t feel that the actual history I taught was whitewashed. The brutality of Britain during colonialism was covered.

What was covered may have been skewed - we did not cover much on slavery or modern Black history and not Ireland/NI.

If you spoke to people from Pakistan or India you'd realise being 'self-flagellating' doesn't even cover it. There be plenty of choice words said.

I’ve never heard of Modern Studies taught outside of Scotland.

The thing we weren’t taught about which pissed me off the most was the history of Ireland/Northern Ireland. At that point bombs were still going off in England and lots of people dying in NI and no one would tell me why. I was left to my granny telling me that the people in the North wanted to move to the South and vice versa 🧐 God bless her she tried her best but left school at 13 and wasn’t best placed to help!

I did the Arab Israeli conflict 1976 for O levels....plus Irish question ( up to 1926) and unification of Italy

Two important points I think.

1. History increases every day. There are decades more of history to teach than when I was at school but no more curriculum time. What do you pick? You can make a decent argument for all of it.
2. There is an unresolvable conflict between education and exam success. Syllabi have to remain stable for some years for practical reasons, schools can't buy new textbooks every 12 months, or redesign schemes of work constantly. Are we wanting children to pass their exams in a set, narrow, achievable band of knowledge or develop a wide ranging and critical interest in world history? It's v v difficult to do both.

Completely agree. I gave up history in y9 poss y8 and remember the princes in the tower and medieval crop rotation
That's about it
I have since learned lots about history but there are huge gaps in my knowledge and timeline, which I wish I knew more about

In fairness to your granny, she was about as knowledgeable as many considerably better-educated people on here are about NI.

Despite living in England for 25 years, I hadn’t realised quite the depth of ignorance about Partition and the Troubles until quite a few Mumsnetters freely admitted that they hadn’t realised there were loyalist paramilitaries.

They can’t teach literally everything. It’s okay for people to read books and self study.

Like @Takoneko says, it is being taught at GCSE in some schools.

My daughter is Y11 and is covering ME Conflict as part of her course but we're struggling to find good study resources on this subject. I'm going to check out some of these articles/podcasts etc.

DD was at an activity for 3 hrs yesterday. When I picked her up, she told me that she'd spent a lot of time following yesterday's horrific events on her phone. She's equally fascinated and scared. We had a long conversation about the background and history. I learned a lot from my DD yesterday.

As you don’t know what I’ve been taught this is a bold claim.

I know that Britain and America were crucial in setting up the situation that now exists in Israel and Palestine and wouldn’t claim otherwise btw. Although it’s also important not to understate the agency of the Israelis and Palestinians themselves.

What I’m saying is that studying history has moved on. It’s certainly not all “wasn’t Britain clever”.

^and India and Pakistan obviously same goes.

History in schools focus's on British History because that is where we live and it puts pupil's own lives into context for them. Without knowing about their own origins and the history and customs of their own land they can't go on to have an understanding of the history of the world. Wold history is such a vast topic that it would be impossible to cover it within the timeframe allowed in schools- for a start, children can't really learn much in primary school because their learning in constrained by their intellectual capacity and ability to understand History as a concept because of their limited experience of the world and their developmental concepts of time and place. Even the topics that are covered such as Ancient Greece/Stone Age etc. leave many 7 year olds confused because they can't grasp the concepts of time- I see it all the time in the school where I work.

If schools are to teach World History at Secondary, in one lesson a week, then where would they start? Who would decide what is relevant and what isn't? School is just a starting point for education- If you haven't educated yourself any further than what you were taught at school then that is your own fault- do you not read the news, or books, or even look things up on wikipedia when you hear about something you have no knowledge of to find out more about it, do you not watch current affairs programs?

Thanks! She did try and we always dutifully sat and watched Newsround together 🥰

You're right that the level of complete ignorance about it in England at least is shocking. So many otherwise well read people don’t even seem to know that NI is part of the UK, I’ve had friends ask me “which one is which” too. It wasn’t until I met people from Ireland/NI and got into decent chats with them that I really got my head around it at all.

This level of ignorance isn’t really acceptable when this is the history of the UK we’re talking about! (We also learnt nothing about Scotland and if it weren’t for Scottish relatives I’d believe that the Scots were perfectly delighted when the countries were joined and never had any conflict with England before or since…)

I think you misunderstood what I meant

Self-flagellating vs swearing and flag burning.

I think there's an argument for a Current Affairs subject which teaches how modern situations came about. As other people have said, 'history' is extremely broad and is more about teaching culture. Eg awareness of the Vikings and Tudors is part of our culture in the UK.

I did GCSE and A-level history and remember covering:

At GCSE we covered,

History of medicine
Chinese revolution and communism
Irish potato famine, corn laws, workhouse and prison reforms
A unit on local history (the Newcastle-Gateshead fire and the 1832 cholera epidemic, we also did a trip to see how both of these changed the design and layout of the city)
The Vietnam war
Slavery

At A-level we covered

French revolution
Franco-Prussian War
Causes of WW1 (lots of learning about territory, treaties and politics)
WW1
Causes of WW2 and the rise of the Nazis, all three units were taught back to back so you could see the continuity of it
Social changes in post-WW2 Britain
The fall of the Tudors which covered the period from the death of Henry VIII through to the crowning of James VI
A free-choice unit of study on any subject with a 6000 word essay on it at the end

I don't know how much was official curriculum stuff and how much was added by school but we had a really good history department who were very passionate about the subject and each teacher had their own special interests, they would also go off on historical tangents based on our questions or interesting facts, etc. One of our teachers was a political activist, another was an Irish unionist, another was Danish, they brought differing perspectives to the syllabus.

Schools can't teach children the History of Everything Everywhere. There aren't enough years of schooling to cover it (I doubt that there are enough years of life to cover it frankly).

If YOU want your children to have a better understanding of a particular issue then YOU read up on it and teach them.

I was schooled in the 60's and my history concentrated on the Corn Laws, Enclosure and the Industrial Revolution. My sibling 6 years younger was taught mainly WW1 onwards.

Mate, have you ever heard of something called the Second World War?

Same with Scottish history...

I learned loads of Irish stuff at school in Scotland.

You're possibly confusing Modern Studies and History. Also, there is so much history that schools will never be able to teach it all, plus they have to stay clear of stuff that's currently changing/volatile as it's impossible to set exam questions on ongoing history.

The Middle East crisis is very much modern history

I agree OP

My DD did the partition in year 7. I think the history syllabus is far more encompassing, enabling further study/interest in it, now than when I did it. We mainly did between the wars in America and Germany for GCSE (which I loved) and not much else. Before that I don’t remember learning anything in a systematic or chronological way. We did feudalism, Captain Cook and Mesopotamia but that’s all I remember. I’ve learned most of my other history from Horrible Histories.

My son did 3 topics in Nat 5 history at a Scottish school, the Atlantic slave trade, Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism, and Scottish Wars of Independence. In S3 he did medical history, and other random stuff, and they covered Vikings in secondary and primary. They also did a big local history project of their choosing in S2.

The trouble partly is there is a bewildering range of GCSE and A level modules so teachers tend to revert to what they were taught at school. There is no requirement to study eg African history.

I taught an Australian film recently and the kids were astonished to learn about the stolen generations. There is still a habit of not teaching stuff that makes the English/ British look bad.

I think the most recent events (ie Middle East problems) are taught in modern studies vs history. At least that was case when I was in school.

However I completely agree with the point. Not sure how useful it is for our kids to know about the Viking's. However WWs/ the holocaust etc- so important they get an understanding of this.