British history 'needs rewrite'

[Belushi]

I think those of us who went to school in the seventies and early eighties may have had a substantially different history syllabus to the ones in existence now. This is because there were great changes in academic history in the years immediately preceding, but these changes take time to find their way into school studies. So if we were still on kings and queens and crop rotation*, that may not be the case now.

[* = I like kings and queens and crop rotation, but as an approach it has its limits.]

The criticism I've heard nowadays is that all they learn about is the Nazis.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

On the thing about the winners writin history...as I said on a recent Churchill thread, the victors of the academic war waged in the 60s and 70s are driving these moves toward a more 'inclusive' history...give it 20 years and there'll be a conservative historian backlash type thing and it'll go back to Dead White Men and the Heroes and Leaders approach to history...

The same thing had occurred to me. Which is probably why you already get all the shows with Dan fucking Snow.

 

[dash_two]

int he paper today with in london it turns out that the minority population is now white in most london schools around on average 15% of the total school pupil population... isn't it time that history reflected the majority of peoples with in the schools which make up the next generations of people/inhabitiants of this isle??

That story is in today's Times. The 15% figure applies to primary schools in Tower Hamlets and Newham.

The demographic make-up of schools today paints a reasonably accurate picture of the national population around 25-30 years in the future.

 

[Belushi]

The same thing had occurred to me. Which is probably why you already get all the shows with Dan fucking Snow.

And Tristram fucking Hunt.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Anyone know if this kind of soul searching is going on in any other ex-imperial powers?

As you can imagine, in Spain twentieth-century history is astonishingly controversial. I don't know what they teach in schools (and schools are often still quite old-fashioned here) but it's important that when democracy returned to Spain there was an agreement that the events of the past forty years should be left to lie. This is breaking down, as of course it must do, but there is a lot of resistance to it.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Histories are written in the submission and resistance to contingent discourses; which is why the histories of my grandparents - the ones they heard, saw, read, told and re-told - are very different from my histories.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

Perhaps this needs something more.

Secondary school pupils need to know that history isn't singular; there are lots of histories which come together to help us create our understanding of the past.

They need to know that these histories interact; sometimes supportively and sometimes not.

And they need to know that we make our histories, as individuals and socially; we do so by accepting and challenging the histories we are told.

With all the scope for conflict and resolution that this three part approach contains, it shouldn't be too difficult to make history exciting.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[chymaera]

On the subject of history, today is apparently a historic anniversary of a meeting of the Levellers at which democracy was discussed. (This pissed off Cromwell more than a tad)
Has anyone any idea what this was all about?

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Are we talking about the Putney debates?

edit: presumably not

 

[ska invita]

Is every other country going to rewrite their history to fit in with modern feelings too?

History always needs rewriing - the Japanese treatment of their invasion of China is perhaps one of the most blatant breaches of textbook propogada in a "westernised" country.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4416593.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_history_textbook_controversies

The whole sylabus needs changing if you ask me...

 

[kyser_soze]

BTW DF - I'm with you on the Kings, Queens and crop rotation...I remember having to make a drawing of some fields showing how that worked when I was about 10 years old...

I also remember all my history teachers in comprehensive getting excited about switching to looking at 'evidence' in history, rather than just text book, linear narrative stuff - we had to do things like imagine we were a roman soldier writing letters home (I was called Polous Mintus); but it also made us think about stuff like the motivations of the person writing the account we were reading (the primary evidence, never the authors of the text books, altho I doubt we were ready for that level of critical thinking at 11)...was all very exciting. I also remember studying the Russian Revolution and my teacher jumping up on a table to emphasise 'Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to loose but your chains'...

 

[nosos]

This is one of the main problems with "reinterpretation", as it can lead to misreprensation, or sheer invention.

Which is why I think the 'solution' is an awful idea even though I agree with the analysis.

 

[nosos]

Particularly givent he fact that it will inevitably be members of the same establishment as Trevor Phillips who will be rewriting the history thus cementing their role.

 

[kyser_soze]

Which is why I think the 'solution' is an awful idea even though I agree with the analysis.

What, rounding up history teachers and putting them in labour camps?

*going to hell pt MCM*

 

[kyser_soze]

Particularly givent he fact that it will inevitably be members of the same establishment as Trevor Phillips who will be rewriting the history thus cementing their role.

Would these people be related to George Obones 'New Political Class' as ranted about in the speccy a couple of weeks back? I'm waiting for Hefferlump to build up a good head of steam about this...

 

[nosos]

Would these people be related to George Obones 'New Political Class' as ranted about in the speccy a couple of weeks back? I'm waiting for Hefferlump to build up a good head of steam about this...

Not really, more that the multicultural establishment (in spite of Trevor Phillips redefining himself to fit the rejection of multiculturalism) is an incredibly divisive thing: it creates a massive structural impetus for 'community leaders' to stir up inter-group hostility and occlude intra-group differentiation. Unfortunately we have one. I don't think we should fuel it.

 

[kyser_soze]

AHHH, yeah...I see whom you're referring to...

 

[nosos]

But if there were some practically neutral party who could rewrite history to make it more inclusive then I think it would be a great idea.

It's just that there isn't one. Nor could there ever be one. Intellectual standards might not be neutral: historical 'truth' may be perspectival. However as soon as you politicise it, you destroy any possibility of aspiring towards neutrality. The solution is worse than the cure.

 

[kyser_soze]

Yeah, but you have to be inclusive innit? The thing is, if you DO make historymore inclusive to talk about say, slavery, does that mean kids will be taught about slavery in the Islamic caliphates, or the African's who sold other Africans to Europeans ? Or perhaps talking about modern slavery, and focus on the indentured or passport witheld workers in both Iraq and say, Dubai? Somehow when I hear people talking about how british kids need to learn more about slavery I suspect it's one very specific period and group of slaves, rather than the actual history of slavery going back to the Sumerians, and that it's something that pretty much every civilisation has practised at some point in their histories...

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Mind you, they ought to welcome the comparison, since I reckon slavery in the Roman Empire, brutal though it was, was less brutal than slavery in the British.

 

[Belushi]

Mind you, they ought to welcome the comparison, since I reckon slavery in the Roman Empire, brutal though it was, was less brutal than slavery in the British.

At the risk of a derail I dont think it was - from what I've read conditions were appalling on the big farms in the countryside, comparable to the later plantations of the West Indies and Southern States of the US.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

At the risk of a derail

Sod the derail, this is much more interesting.

 

[dash_two]

I read somewhere (forgotten where) that the annual mortality rate for slaves in Jamaica was around 1-in-15 to 1-in-20. Was surprised to learn recently that some of the earliest slaves in Jamaica were Irish. We weren't told either of those things at school.

 

[dash_two]

Mind you, it wouldn't be a lot of fun either being seized by the Sally Rovers and having your nuts chopped off, hence the rarity of distinct slave-descended groups in the Arab world, perhaps.

 

[agricola]

Mind you, they ought to welcome the comparison, since I reckon slavery in the Roman Empire, brutal though it was, was less brutal than slavery in the British.

I disagree - certainly we dont see in British history the widespread (ie: on teh scale of thousands or tens of thousands) massacre of slaves following wars or rebellions that happened many times during the Republic, though of course slavery in our Empire was kept at a respectable distance from the mainland.

 

[kyser_soze]

Didn't the rules on slavery in the Roman empire place certain obligations on the owner too? Or was that somewhere else...I do remember reading this once, that the condition of the slave reflected well or badly on the owner, kind of like keeping your house nice and tidy and using a toilet freshener...

 

[dash_two]

I wouldn't place too much credence in the power or reliability of such rules. After all, Islamic law forbade castration, but Arab slave owners found ways to circumvent this on a widespread scale.

The major determinant of how well slaves were treated must have been how much they cost their owner.

 

[kyser_soze]

WEll yeah, and I would imagine that you'd want to keep the house slaves in good nick cos they'd be seen out and about in town, whereas you could keep yr agrislaves in a box or something...

 

[Belushi]

I think it may have been in Tom Hollands 'Rubicon' that I read about the conditions of agricultural slaves in the Roman Empire, the Republic had started out with many small farmers but gradually the land had been bought up by large landlords who farmed it using slave Labour living in barracks and literally worked to death, reminiscent of the plantations of the deep south.

 

[kyser_soze]

Hey Peter griffin...please can I analise your wife?

 

[Belushi]

Hey Peter griffin...please can I analise your wife?

Don't make me use my scarejew