Teaching History

[The Larch]

They're the forefathers of guerrilla warfare, for instance.

Really? Just that one tribe out of all of Hispania? I thought the whole place was a slog for the Romans.

They were one of the biggest thorns in the Roman side during the pacification of the Iberian peninsula, and Viriathus employed mostly what the Romans called latrocinium, which would amount to irregular warfare, while other tribes were involved in bellum, which would be regular warfare. Viriathus' resistance and difficulty to be beaten while guerrillaing in the mountains of Western Iberia was such that he had to be defeated by treachery (he was assassinated by Lusitani traitors).

Funnily enough he is nowadays a Portuguese national hero and symbol of Portuguese independence, while also being claimed as a local hero by some parts of Spain.

[KRonn]

They're the forefathers of guerrilla warfare, for instance.

Really? Just that one tribe out of all of Hispania? I thought the whole place was a slog for the Romans.

They were one of the biggest thorns in the Roman side during the pacification of the Iberian peninsula, and Viriathus employed mostly what the Romans called latrocinium, which would amount to irregular warfare, while other tribes were involved in bellum, which would be regular warfare. Viriathus' resistance and difficulty to be beaten while guerrillaing in the mountains of Western Iberia was such that he had to be defeated by treachery (he was assassinated by Lusitani traitors).

Funnily enough he is nowadays a Portuguese national hero and symbol of Portuguese independence, while also being claimed as a local hero by some parts of Spain.

That's an interesting bit of history. 

[Sheilbh]

Just out of curiosity if you grow up in Gloucestershire do you get any Gloucestershire history or is it pretty generic across England? Here you usually get your year when you cover the history of your state. I am sure the history of Idaho is fascinating stuff. My mother grew up in Oklahoma and most of it was all the treaties that were broken with the local tribes who were forcibly moved there.

I don't know anything about Gloucestershire (not 100% sure where it is ) I'm afraid. We don't really get that type of local history I don't think - did some rough outline about how the bit of Scotland I grew up in was Norwegian for a very long time.

[Monoriu]

When I was a student in Hong Kong, there were two history courses - Chinese and everybody else. 

Chinese history is very structured.  Chinese history is basically a series of dynastic struggles.  So the first thing before learning any history is to memorise the dynasty chart.  Then they start from the very beginning, the mythical times, and go through dynasty by dynasty, until the People's Republic of China.  The focus is on memorisation - what happened, and why things happened.  Everything was presented as fact, and our job was to memorise them.  Naturally, a lot more is said about recent dynasties like the Ming and Qing than say the Han, simply because more historical material is available.  Finally, almost nothing is said about the People's Republic of China after its establishment.  This is to avoid touching politics and to avoid offending anyone.  This is consistent with the historical approach.  Say if you were born as a history scholar in the Song dynasty, you are not supposed to write anything about the Song dynasty because you can't criticise or comment on your emperor or his family, who are absolute perfections. 

Western history is far more haphazard.  They can't seem to decide where to focus.  So they talk a bit about the Romans, the Egyptians, the Japanese, the Americas, etc.  Instead of the rather continuous Chinese story, we got segments.  There is a bit of Renaissance, a bit of Napoleon, a bit of Meiji Restoration, a bit of Caesar etc.  Lots of snapshots but no whole picture. 

One thing about education in HK is everybody tries their best to avoid politics. 

[Eddie Teach]

I mean hell from what you have told me the English are shockingly ignorant about Scotland, Wales, and many parts of England. If they are not even that informed about people they share an island with, I can see why they wouldn't know much about Ireland.

Are they even aware places like Jersey exist?

As an American I totally get that.

Sadly, Americans don't have the option of forgetting that Jersey exists. 

[Oexmelin]

The British system remains a little bit too esoteric to me to decipher completely what you meant in your initial post, Sheilbh.

When I get them in college, the kids have usually gone through secondary education history. The overwhelming majority of the students I got in the US had gone through history AP ("Advanced placement") which is intended as a quasi college-level course; the majority of students I got had followed these classes at elite private high schools. As far as I could tell, these AP courses covered either "European history", "US history" and "World history". Most of these courses have recently dropped the pre-modern component (or a huge chunk of it).

Is a national focus good, or bad? Both, I think. As long as an important basis for our political existence remains the state, I think it is important to understand its underpinnings, its history. Some part of it is inevitably going to be "inherited", i.e., you are going to be teaching the fucking Tudors because the Tudors have made damn sure that we keep talking about them forever. And, often for worse, that inherited part is just taught unreflexively. You just "have to know it", and that's okay, because it provides a common, cultural ground, some shared references that can serve as a link with your fellow citizens.

But there has often been a reaction against the narrow focus on national history. Some of it quite understandable. Can we truly get a good measure of who the Tudors were, if we have nothing to compare them against? Are they some sort of extraordinary dynasty, or some generic royal family? Aren't there any other ways to organize societies? What about the Dutch, at the same time? Or the Iroquois? The Aztecs?

Now, part of the problem I see is that the reaction against national history has led reformists to advocate for gigantic breadth of coverage, to the detriment of depth. "World history" encompasses India, China, Africa, South America, etc. What it does is, it flattens historical experience to a number of invariants (commerce, for instance). It favors certain themes. Which isn't bad. It's just that these are choices, yet seem to be rarely presented as such. The difficulty is this: are the choices motivated by some explicit linkages between national history and larger, more "thematic" world history? Or are the choices motivated by the desire to learn other societies on their own terms?

Striking the right balance isn't easy. It's also quite political (and rightly so). At a distance, it seemed to me that the spite with which the European project was met in the UK was reflected in the absence of European history in the program. It answers to the idea that the history of Europe had little to say about UK history; it shouldn't be that surprising then, that Britons were so woefully ignorant of European realities, felt so disconnected from it all. The current movement for more "empire" in the school curriculum wants to make an explicit link between the UK now, the composition of its population, and its imperial past. It seems to me a good idea. But how to do it, in a way that doesn't transform the central place of the UK as the only agent of history? One of the answers seems to me to show the autonomous existence of the Indian or African polities before the UK gets involved.

My American students were always quite passionate about Rome: it's not that surprising, considering that references to it presided over the birth of the country. This is an example of an "unspoken" link: not mentioned, but still resonating, almost subconsciously, in young adults. It allowed Rome to be studied "on its own". But "World history" seemed to be studied so far removed that any individual unit seemed to lose its focus compared with the US. It seemed to preserve the idea that the US cannot meaningfully be compared to any other individual country. It can be caught in global "currents" that touch all the globe, but its place within such currents remains weirdly unaddressed.

I think this contributes to the conservative backlash against college history. Obviously, if the only history you want is the one that validates how "the lousiest day in the US beats the best day in any other country", you'll never be satisfied. You want propaganda, not history. But it's also a reaction that continues to take place within the globally untouched narrative of American exceptionalism. Widening the scope of history has not changed that. It has simply made America a part of the globe, without really giving the means to assess its place. If the goal is to displace American exceptionalism, I think you'd need systematic comparisons with other states or empires. 

Anyways, these are my more or less coherent thoughts for now.

[Josquius]

I might park this for a separate thread as I think it's fairly easy to split Irish history into goodies and baddies

If you want to break it into a simple England vs. Ireland narrative then sure. Its obvious that 99 times out of 100 England is clearly in the wrong. But this is fundamentally the wrong way to look at history.

and I'm not sure what the nonsense is about the great famine.

That it was a genocide. You see an awful lot of people who believe it really was Queen Victoria dancing around Ireland stealing potatoes and cackling manically.
Its sad because the true lesson of the great famine is a very valid one to learn. But evil England tries to kill the Irish is easier and more useful.

But lots of Irish people I've spoken with find the embarrassment at "nationalism" really odd, because it's the basis of their being an Irish state and it's strange (from their view) that there's no equivalent nationalism in bits of the UK, or an embarassment around nationalism. Because without that what are we all doing?

Yes. I understand why they've set up the system in this way. The convenient version of history with everyone in Ireland straining under the English yoke, finally fighting for the freedom and breaking free.... its just so much better for the nation than the actual more complex history where the bulk of Ireland wasn't too fussed about independence until after the Easter Rising et al.

However I fundamentally disagree with the ideology of nationalism, no matter whether it is punching up or punching down its all the same. Its lies and convenient alternate versions of the truth to empower one nation by putting another down. Once upon a time it may have served a purpose but in the 21st century it does more harm than good.

Edit: Also the big hole in the English syllabuses I've posted - given the population of the UK and the size of the country and the interestingness of the history is India which really should be fixed.

True. There's a lot of different angles that can be looked at there too. Ties nicely into the development of capitalism. Would have to be very careful to avoid it becoming a imperial nostalgia trip however; that imperialism was better than corporate rule and the best of a bunch of terrible options in the period doesn't mean its a desirable state.

Just out of curiosity if you grow up in Gloucestershire do you get any Gloucestershire history or is it pretty generic across England? Here you usually get your year when you cover the history of your state. I am sure the history of Idaho is fascinating stuff. My mother grew up in Oklahoma and most of it was all the treaties that were broken with the local tribes who were forcibly moved there.

For me I remember this being touched on a little bit at primary school. But only on a very basic level of looking at one particular historic incident and the occasional project with a local museum.
It's definitely something where more should be done.

[The Larch]

So, what's the true lesson of the Irish famine?

[Gups]

So, what's the true lesson of the Irish famine?

Diversification of agriculture is important
Laissez-faire doesn't work in a crisis

A-level history syllabus for my son was (a) Tudors (b) Soviet Union 1917-1953 (c) Long written paper on causes of decolinisation in Africa

[Monoriu]

I increasingly think we spend far too much time on teaching history.  Sure, everybody should have some idea, and we need some history scholars.  But otherwise it isn't a very useful subject.  Schools should teach things like financial management, how to find a job, coding, AI, etc instead. 

[Sheilbh]

So, what's the true lesson of the Irish famine?

I'd argue it was effectively a genocide - but it's along the lines of a 19th century liberal Holodmodor rather than, you know, a Mel Gibson film.

Yes. I understand why they've set up the system in this way. The convenient version of history with everyone in Ireland straining under the English yoke, finally fighting for the freedom and breaking free.... its just so much better for the nation than the actual more complex history where the bulk of Ireland wasn't too fussed about independence until after the Easter Rising et al.

I don't think they're learning propaganda (in the same way I don't think English schools teach it - I never learned the old-school "good Queen Bess" style stuff at school).

But I do think the story they're learning is the story of modern Ireland which is one of colonialism and some settling, plus acts of resistance which range from full-blown nationalist (not sectarian) revolt, to other sort of bits of resistance - setting up the infrastructure of a separate state, revival of Gaelic culture or the land war (the origin of the word boycott and the first cancel culture ). Obviously every colonial state has people who benefit from it whether they are middle-men or the ascendancy or the sort of service-providing bourgeois - Dublin solicitors etc.

I suppose I'd push the other way and say there is more continuity with the Easter Rising and the past, it's not a bolt from a clear blue sky that "changed, changed utterly". I think it comes from a context of resistance and the reason it sort of clarified Irish politics at that moment was that history.

[Gups]

In my view, it wasn't a genocide under any ordinary definition of that term (which I understand to be a deliberate attempt to exterminate an ethnic group). Rather it was the culmination of a long period of mismanagement and neglect by both Irish and English landowners and administrators informed partially by racism and bigotry. The main argument in favour of classifying it as a genocide is the words and actions of Trevelyan who, at best, didn't care whether a million or two Irish died and at worst thought it woudl be a good thing. On the other hand both prime ministers during the famine (Peel and Russell) were horrified by it and tried to alleviate it.

[Sheilbh]

In my view, it wasn't a genocide under any ordinary definition of that term (which I understand to be a deliberate attempt to exterminate an ethnic group). Rather it was the culmination of a long period of mismanagement and neglect by both Irish and English landowners and administrators informed partially by racism and bigotry. The main argument in favour of classifying it as a genocide is the words and actions of Trevelyan who, at best, didn't care whether a million or two Irish died and at worst thought it woudl be a good thing. On the other hand both prime ministers during the famine (Peel and Russell) were horrified by it and tried to alleviate it.

Peel tried to alleviate it. Russell did far less to help, I think for ideological reasons, and my understanding is it was managed far less by politicians under Russell so people like Trevelyan had a lot more influence and as you say, at the most generous reading, he's indifferent.

I think the comparison with the Holodomor is probably the nearest - and there's a question on whether that was a genocide. They are both largely man-made famines (there is a natural cause in Ireland - but everywhere in Europe gets the blight and nowhere is there a famine like this, plus there are examples of previous food shortages in Ireland that were stopped by government action such as banning the export of food etc), they're ideologically driven, and they disproportionately affect a minority ethnic group. I think in both cases there's also a sort of racial/national element to the ideology so Ukraine is a land of kulaks and the Irish overbreed and cannot, rationally, improve their agriculture to sustain themselves - so these national groups are to an extent a challenge to the political system.

[celedhring]

They're the forefathers of guerrilla warfare, for instance.

Really? Just that one tribe out of all of Hispania? I thought the whole place was a slog for the Romans.

They were one of the biggest thorns in the Roman side during the pacification of the Iberian peninsula, and Viriathus employed mostly what the Romans called latrocinium, which would amount to irregular warfare, while other tribes were involved in bellum, which would be regular warfare. Viriathus' resistance and difficulty to be beaten while guerrillaing in the mountains of Western Iberia was such that he had to be defeated by treachery (he was assassinated by Lusitani traitors).

Funnily enough he is nowadays a Portuguese national hero and symbol of Portuguese independence, while also being claimed as a local hero by some parts of Spain.

Always liked the (completely apocryphal) story about the proconsul then betraying the traitors because "Roma traditoribus non praemiat" ("Rome doesn't pay traitors")

[Tamas]

I remember reading the Paradox forums back in the day it was quite a revelation to find that Romanian and Hungarian history teaching differs so much that they are of different realities. Especially because of the Romanian insistence on their Dacians-ruled-the-world kind of deal, but also Hungarian high school education at least in my time largely ignored minorities within the country, until around the 1700s. The line taught was basically that everything was fine until the Turkish occupation and wars depopulated the country (which for sure did happen) and all these Slavs and Romanians moved into Hungary and later started being uppity.

And of course my favourite part of calling the Magyar pillaging campaigns across Europe as "adventures". 

I would assume same intentions and mechanics at play with the UK not keen to dwell on the history of Ireland, and Ireland not keen to teach just how divided they were until very recently.