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?

Gawd, glad there's no chance of me seeing it, then!

(Ricardian here from way back - went to York in '89 to see his old stamping ground, and got to have an eyeball to eyeball with his portrait in the NPG while it was down in storage. The nice staff let a couple of Aussies who'd come a very long way in among the racks!)

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

totally agree. I wasn’t educated in England. I learned much more Irish history, world History in general, WW 1 annd 2, rise of the Nazis and studied the Arab/Israeli conflict in detail. We were taught about India, colonialism, and some US history. we were taught about slavery and the U.K. role in it.
we studied the Cold War, and it’s consequences.

1066 and Henry 8th or vikings whatever was briefly covered in primary school but as soon as we were older we seemed to be taught about history that had more relevance to our lives.

My children are educated in England and the curriculum is dire - Elizabethans. Medicine, world wars only.

History is vast though and schools can only do.so.much
I left school in 1990 and did history GCSE , it was all.about the agricultural and industrial revolution which was not the most interesting point in history imo
I guess if you want your kids to learn certain periods of history it wull.ysvevto.be done at home in most cases

@Whereforartthoudave The thing is that the National Curriculum in England is very flexible and history departments have a huge amount of freedom in terms of what to teach. Knowing what they teach in your child’s school only tells you about that school not the country as a whole.
I teach totally different things to your daughter’s school. We cover all of the things that you were taught. Some at Key Stage 3, some at Key Stage 4. Our A Level is fairly trad but the Key Stage 3-4 stuff is about as varied and international as it gets.

I agree that history teaching in this country is woefully inadequate to the point I think it’s done on purpose . Geo-political history would be far more useful than hearing how many wives King Henry 8th had. The transition from first to second wife is useful to know due to the creation of the Church of England. Beyond that, it’s just a story of an entitled monarch.

Britain’s involvement in the creation of Israel, the partition of India, dealing with China, the Zulu’s etc is more useful on understanding how the world shapes up today. It will also help rid us of this damaging exceptionalism so many of us have in this country.

@Catsmere, good for you. I am married to a Yorkshire man and his unwavering view is Richard (III) Was Framed.

It is possible to pick up some historical information from fiction.
The film Lawrence of Arabia shows how the British worked with Arab tribes to weaken the hold of the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
At the end of the film Lawrence is dismissed from a meeting between (I think) the Kings of Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. They thanked him and got on with carving up the Middle East which was their 'property'.
How exactly true that all is, I am unsure. But those frontiers and boundaries were left unchallenged for many years.
Kuwait became strategically important as an Oil port after shipping started to adopt oil in place of coal. Military Navies of GB and US changed from about 1900.

Wikipedia is a place to "Start" ones own research but it is very influenced by American viewpoints.

Scroll down the page for sources.

I’ve long thought so - Bloody Tudors!

If you had been taught, which version would you have been taught? Would you be any further forward in your understanding of the complex reality?

(I'm angry we weren't taught about our part in the slave trade)

Agree. Though Tey is fanciful she has a good point. My DH is writing a novel about Francis Lovell and Richard III, and our research is bringing up how unlikely it is that RIII murdered his nephews - or that they were murdered at all, there is good evidence Warbeck was Richard, Duke of York and that Simnel was not the young man the battle of Stoke Field was fought over - and that they were illegitimate (and possibly Edward IV was as well, though that is contentious) because Edward IV had a pre-contract with Eleanor Talbot Butler (and possibly others, he had a very fluid view of marriage and a promise to marry followed by sex made a marriage in the fifteenth century) and that his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was also uncanonical (it broke English and church law), making all their children illegitimate.

Which part of the slave trade? That's been going on for 6000 years +. Everyone slaved, and slavery was normal and accepted until the Enlightenment in Europe (1700s), which made people think that owning other human beings and treating them as things was not according to God's law. The UK spent lives and treasure ending the Atlantic Slave Trade after 1807, and treasure and power ending it elsewhere over the next hundred years. Slavery still goes on, especially in Africa, where it's endemic in many, many countries. Currently, there are slave markets in Libya. Why are we allowed to think that the Atlantic Slave Trade was the only slave trade and that only Europeans operated it? Arabs and African tribal chieftains (notably Dahomey - Benin - and Burunda - Uganda - as well as most countries down the West coast) were slaving for centuries before the Portuguese turned up. Zanzibar was the centre for slaving eastwards from around the 7th century AD until it was ended c. 1880 by the British.
I am certainly angry that only the Atlantic Slave Trade is taught, not the depredations over several centuries by the Barbary Pirates, not the slaving by Arabs in Sub-Saharan Africa for several hundred years. We would understand better were we better informed.

Excellent post - I agree

The thing is that those who live in the UK would be taught British history just as those who live in America are taught American history and so-on. Why should teachers of history in the UK be burdened with teaching history of the whole world?

World history, like social history, economic history etc. are all subjects in their own right.
If you have particular obsession or interest in the history of things outside the curriculum - that knowledge is out there and available to anyone.

It irks me that the history of Britain is somehow considered not worthy of study by its resident population because there are other histories out there. If you live here - it is part of your own history.

I was watching the excellent (so far) program Union on the BBC and it explains the fascinating history of how this Union of the 4 countries came to be.
It covers facts that I was not unaware of without being in any way biased. Worth a watch.

It's not an excellent post, it is bigoted, biased and ignorant. Ironically exactly why we need a different approach to teaching history in UK schools.

Topics I learned in school from Yr 7 to A level.

Origins of the American Civil War
Reconstruction Era America
Civil Rights in America
The Irish Question
Prehistoric England
Medicine
Elizabeth 1
Gunpowder Plot
The American West
The Great Depression
The Industrial Revolution
The Reformation
The Transatlantic Slave Trade
The Cold War
WW1
WW2
Norman Conquest
Serfs
Women's Suffrage
Wars of the Roses
English Civil War
Magna Carta

There is bound to be more, but that is all I can recall in

I am grateful that this breadth of curriculum over 7 years of secondary education gave me a decent all round grounding that allowed me to understand current affairs in historical context. Granted, I opted to to GCSE and A level history, but it was far from just Henry viii and his wives.

If I was being critical, it was a bit USA heavy at the end, but our school has a good record on these units so stuck with them! Plus it annoys me that schools teach ancient history badly, i.e. first came the Egyptions, then Greeks, then Romans, then Saxons, then Vikings, then Normans etc. and there isn't even a mention of ancient Sumer, Babylon, the Hittites, ancient Canun, Phoenicians, Celts etc.

We need a good broad teaching of history without over-emphasising certain 'right-on' topics. Windrush, India-Pakistan, Isreal Palestine need to be taught, but not at the expense of the other areas I've mentioned.

Films are not a place to learn history.

I agree it was a terrible post and illustrates why factual world history must be taught in UK schools. Teaching world history is not a ‘burden’, it’s essential to mitigate against posts such as the awful slavery post above.

Since some cannot talk of syllabus without frothing and insults like bigoted it is no surprise that modern history is dodged in favour of the older topics.
There are few set facts but so much is opinion. See Mid East. It does not have Laws like Physics does. Acceleration due to Gravity is undisputed. Not the same as trying to discus or explain Shining Path, Viet Cong or Irgun.

The term "bigot" is only an insult if used in an exaggerated or false promise. It can also be a factual statement. And trying to minimize the uniqueness, and government endorsed aspect of the NAST by comparison to other opportunistic activities, is beyond ignorant.

How do you think the word was used in that instance?

History is more about teaching analysis of a particular situation and how/why it developed than educating people in current geopolitics. It is best done from a distance (in time).

Teachers probably have enough to cope with without having to teach about contentious situations to groups of pupils and parents who may have very differing viewpoints due to their backgrounds. Keeping the discussion balanced and neutral in a way that keeps everyone happy on some situations I can imagine is virtually impossible and probably far easier to avoid.

Not necessarily saying that is right, but I can understand why it is avoided.

@GasPanic I agree with you. They are still re-evaluating 1930s including Churchill, very difficult to teach a simple story to under 14s I would think.

We have Viking, Roman, Saxon, artifacts and names around us to show the links with 'our' story.

@Leggytigberk by your own admission you can't tell where fiction ends and fact begins. FFS.

Any attempt to compare the NAST with any other slavery practices is just a blind devotion to minimising European imperial colonialism. (=Bigoted).

Are you sure you mean me? I don't recall mentioning the slave trade.

I don't think it is bigoted to reference other examples of slavery. I don't want children to enter adulthood under the misapprehension that the NAST was the only act of enslavement in human history with slavery exclusively practiced by white Europeans on black Africans. Its not bigoted to point that out no matter how many times you shout it out.

Children need to be educated about the NAST, it is vital to understand the heinous crimes committed in the past, and the impact that had on peoples, and that many people today use the language of slavery when referring to black people, and why that is so offensive. It is also important to educate on how and why it was abolished, and how the suffering didn't just end there.

It doesn't minimise it to educate them on other instances of slavery, or how African tribal leaders gleefully traded their people for riches, or how their are still people who are slaves today. If anything it makes it more powerful to show just how cruel civilisations have been through history of all creeds, colours and religions, and that the people of tomorrow have it in their hands to be better than the generations in their own country, and from other countries.