"Don't Mention the War!"

[rebness]

There was an article in the paper yesterday about how the German government is bribing—yes, bribing—British schoolteachers to come to Germany and consider maybe teaching *some* history that doesn’t involve the word “Nazi.”

This is a sore point with me, because I absolutely love history. I think it gives us a real sense of who we are, it guides us through our past mistakes… it’s just really funky, like. And yet… every single thing I know about Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, South American, Australian… hell, anything except British, American and German history, I had to teach myself after I left school.

This is A Bad Thing culturally. It’s somehow still acceptable for people to make blanket assumptions about Germany and the Germans. My brother’s potential father-in-law told him he was stupid for ever working in the country, “because they’re all Nazis.” Who is the ignorant one there?

Hell, how many people in Britain thought that Take Me Out was sung by some Europop guy called Franz Ferdinand? I kid you not.

When I was ten, we did a semester’s project on wartime Britain. Then when I entered secondary school at eleven, that year’s curriculum was—the war. Second year? Second world war. Second year English? World War II poetry. Third year? Hitler’s Germany. Then along came Options. This is a system whereby in English schools you can choose to drop some lessons and keep others on for your GCSE exams to get into college.

I kept history, because I liked it. Or because I hated Geography and didn’t want to take up Spanish. Whatever. Anyway, we were told that our studies for the exams would be on European history. Guess— go on, I challenge you—guess which period of history and what country we studied? For two whole years. Argh.

College came up and I kept history along with language and literature. We had two options for study: American history from the 1700s to present day, or European history. Now, think about this. European history—can I even give a reasonable guess on how many cultures and countries and millenniums and revolutions and movements passed since man first settled throughout Europe? Of course not.

Guess which one period of history and which country was predominantly up for study. Wait, I lie. The First World War was on the syllabus, too.

Hence, there was no way in hell I was choosing to hear the same old lessons when OMFG! There were like revolutions and civil wars and Anglophiles and shootings and tea parties and all kinds of stuff in the American history lessons. I think, through the module on the European settlers, I learned more about England, France, Spain and Italy’s history than I did in the previous decade of history lessons. Bleh.

Which brings me back around to the second world war. Yes, it was a terrible thing. Yes—every educated child in every country should know about it—but please. Are there not lessons to be learned from the divisions in Italy? Was Franco’s Spain not a huge warning to Europe and a lesson about international solidarity? Was the French revolution not an example of the people making history, as well as a lesson on human nature? Does Britain not have a whole slew of different cultures (well, invading Vikings and Romans and Celts) that should be looked at?

Wasn’t it the British who invented the concentration camp? Was the word terrorist not invented during the madness of France’s Reign of Terror? Why do so many English place names have Scandinavian roots? Why was the hat tax one of the stupidities inflicted upon the settlers of America?

These are questions that schoolchildren should be asking. They’re part of our culture, for God’s sake. And yet I guarantee that the only things most children in Britain remember from their history lessons are “Germans BAD” and “divorced, beheaded, died…”

Comments

[pigeongirl99.livejournal.com]

Agree with everything pretty much, though my schooling mostly consisted of 'Romans in Britain' every single bloody year from first school to middle school. After that I have some vague recollections on The Blitz, but at options I did Schools Project History rather than Modern History, so had a couple years of- The American West, Medicine Through Time, Tarring (a local village), anmd most probably something else that I have absolutely no recollection of :)

At Sixth Form I did do a wonderful Ancient History A Level, which was half Rome AD 14 - 112, and half Greece 5th Century BC...

Beyond this though I am entirely clueless.

Hell, how many people in Britain thought that Take Me Out was sung by some Europop guy called Franz Ferdinand? I kid you not.

Okay, now that is just bloody scary!

[sroit.livejournal.com]

Let me tell you, dearest, I guarantee you still got better history lessons than MANY in American schools. History was boring to me, that is, until I got OUT of school and looked up all this interesting stuff myself that we were never, ever taught. Then I loved it!

~head shake~

[saffronlie.livejournal.com]

I feel that the most important history is your own, and, OF COURSE, almost none was taught when I went through primary school. Our grade six teachers got incredibly worried that we didn't know a damn thing about the history of Australia because we'd never been taught any, so in grade seven we did the Vietnam War and how to vote. In high school we did some ancient history, a half-arsed attempt at mediaeval times (seemed to focus a lot on Henry VIII), then a short unit on the first world war. And then in senior years I took ancient again because I love ancient history so much more anyway. So... I think my point is, you think you have it bad learning only wartime Britain, but at least you were taught British history.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Wow, it's always interesting to see what others learned in something as broad as "history". My schooling definitely never had that much focus on WWII, though obviously it did feature in both world history and US history. The thing that really annoys me is that I know virtually nothing of the years after WWII up through whenever I started taking notice of the world around me (possibly sometime in the 90s). We'd start at the beginning and then just keep going until the school year ran out. I know nothing of the Vietnam and Korean wars because we never had enough time in the year...

Why was the hat tax one of the stupidities inflicted upon the settlers of America?

...Spite?

[jaffacakequeen.livejournal.com]

excellent subject matter

i love history, but i dropped it from school because, it was so bloody pointless and boring! in some ways the WW's would have been interesting, but as far as my memory serves me, we focused in high school on the Industrial Revolution, steam engines, miners strike etc. We had a good broad history of England.. but no other country and hardly anything on Scotland or Wales let alone Spain or France! I think there needs to be a broad approach to history, but then the schools could be guilty of being to broad and not analysisng anything in depth which something as WW2 deserves to be. it will be interesting in the years to come how history will cover current events! Britain has been to war 3 times since WW2? do they study this at school? the Falkands, the Gulfwar x 2, current terriorism issues? i think the history curriculam no matter what country is set to what is politically correct at the time, which isnt right