Teaching History

[The Brain]

The Ur-Swede appeared ready made from primordial soup, inhabiting exactly the area that forms modern Sweden.

[Syt]

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

We learned about Otto I kicking Hungarian butt and starting to fortify the HRE frontier with tons of castles.

[Tamas]

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

We learned about Otto I kicking Hungarian butt and starting to fortify the HRE frontier with tons of castles.

Yeah that was a major buzzkill.

[Sheilbh]

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

Yeah I remember moving from Scotland to England when I was doing my Standard Grades (compulsory Scottish exams at 16, now changed) to GCSEs (compulsory English exams at 16). It was kind of incredible getting the wildly different perspectives on the Scottish reiving of the North of England, Henry VIII's "rough wooing" of Scotland and above all Mary Queen of Scots v Elizabeth

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.

I've mainly looked at the non-compulsory history qualification that you study at 17-18. But I just find the Irish one more coherent (and I think there are several units listed up there that would touch on divisions in Ireland) because it's got two narrative streams of basically Early Modern Irish and European history, Late Modern Irish and European history.

Whereas in England there is no emphasis on history as that sort of broad narrative. You study periods slightly in isolation and there's a slight focus on the UK (at least 20%) but not to the same extent as in Ireland or, by the sounds of it, other countries and there's no real focus on European history - though you might cover France, Germany, Italy or Russia, say. Maybe my focus on "national story" is wrong - the thing, comparing the two, that I find weird is there is that the English history curriculum doesn't really do history as a broader narrative - like Early Modern/Late Modern. It's very split up into periods of 50-100 years and these are used to teach about using sources or documents etc rather than where it fits in. It feels to me a little bit more like the sort of units you'd get at university.

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.

So there's definitely a class element here in the UK with this. You know you cover the Romans in primary school when you're very young (Egyptions, Romans, Picts and Celts, Vikings etc) but I think the history syllabus at both 16 and 18 only goes back to the Medieval period at the earliest, but there are separate courses for Ancient History or Classical Civilisation (and Latin and Greek) but I think very few state schools offer those. I know a Classical Civilisation teacher at a state school, but I think it's quite rare.

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?

Yeah so I think looking at the English v Irish syllabus, plus the comments here makes me think that in England it's gone in a slightly different direction.  We don't teach a "national story" but we also don't teach very broad things like "world history". The approach has been to focus on specific skills (which you use in all units) and teach those through examining specific periods. There's no English history/European history/World history approach. I remember for the compulsory history course at 16 we did have one broad stroke unit and mine was (Western/Muslim) medicine through the ages.

So in the syllabus at the top: the first exam is on documents - so you'll have a variety of primary sources and you need to interpret them; the second exam is basically about causes of events and weighing relevant factors; the third exam is an extract by a historian and basically about why historians have different interpretations and how they develop them; then the fourth exam is all of the above about your in-depth study.

But that approach doesn't have a national (or wider story) and it's also not very broad, but is reasonably deep on a period. It makes think whether we have gone too far in teaching history as a set of skills (which they'll develop at university) rather than a story whether national, European or world. My feeling, having looked at the two examples plus what people are posting, is that there might be a benefit to teaching that common story at schools and sort of distribute the skills through that. I'm not sure.

[The Brain]

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

We learned about Otto I kicking Hungarian butt and starting to fortify the HRE frontier with tons of castles.

Yeah that was a major buzzkill.

[Valmy]

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. 

I find it surprising you once thought differently from this

[Tamas]

While individuals should be left alone with their own identity and such, I think it is best if a country's inhabitants have a basic common understanding on some minimum of basic common identity that holds their country together. Ideally this identity is about liberal values, but clearly it is easier to establish a spin on history acceptable to everyone and then teach that. 

[Valmy]

While individuals should be left alone with their own identity and such, I think it is best if a country's inhabitants have a basic common understanding on some minimum of basic common identity that holds their country together. Ideally this identity is about liberal values, but clearly it is easier to establish a spin on history acceptable to everyone and then teach that. 

History is pretty important for political reasons which is why it is always the big hot button issue in the recurring and interminable textbook wars here in the United States despite not actually being a very important subject in schools generally.

I think no matter what political system you have it can be pretty important to the government for that reason.

[The Larch]

While individuals should be left alone with their own identity and such, I think it is best if a country's inhabitants have a basic common understanding on some minimum of basic common identity that holds their country together. Ideally this identity is about liberal values, but clearly it is easier to establish a spin on history acceptable to everyone and then teach that.

I don't think that the mission of teaching history should be related to the building of a national identity, but to make people understand the present through the study of the past and how the country arrived to its current situation.

[Valmy]

While individuals should be left alone with their own identity and such, I think it is best if a country's inhabitants have a basic common understanding on some minimum of basic common identity that holds their country together. Ideally this identity is about liberal values, but clearly it is easier to establish a spin on history acceptable to everyone and then teach that.

I don't think that the mission of teaching history should be related to the building of a national identity, but to make people understand the present through the study of the past and how the country arrived to its current situation.

Yeah well that is not how I see it normally thought about. It is considered a kind of civics lesson through which "American values" or civic virtues are relayed. Only a small percentage really considers it important in its own right outside of transmitting values, the same way it is important to teach literacy or something.

[The Larch]

While individuals should be left alone with their own identity and such, I think it is best if a country's inhabitants have a basic common understanding on some minimum of basic common identity that holds their country together. Ideally this identity is about liberal values, but clearly it is easier to establish a spin on history acceptable to everyone and then teach that.

I don't think that the mission of teaching history should be related to the building of a national identity, but to make people understand the present through the study of the past and how the country arrived to its current situation.

Yeah well that is not how I see it normally thought about. It is considered a kind of civics lesson through which "American values" or civic virtues are relayed. Only a small percentage really considers it important in its own right outside of transmitting values, the same way it is important to teach literacy or something.

In my opinion that should be the role of a different subject, but not necessarily history. There's plenty of history to be taught to pile on top the teaching of civics and political values.

[Josquius]

While individuals should be left alone with their own identity and such, I think it is best if a country's inhabitants have a basic common understanding on some minimum of basic common identity that holds their country together. Ideally this identity is about liberal values, but clearly it is easier to establish a spin on history acceptable to everyone and then teach that. 

The assumption here being that holding the country together is desirable. Which many would disagree with. Certainly that it is the most important thing isn't something I'd go along with

[Valmy]

In my opinion that should be the role of a different subject, but not necessarily history. There's plenty of history to be taught to pile on top the teaching of civics and political values.

Ah but from what we have been saying you are definitely the minority on that. The Irish government is not interested in building up a nuanced view, they want the students to identify with the goodies so they can be good Irish citizens with proper values. Same as Texas has as its mission to teach history to let students know such self-evident truths as the goodness of "Judeo-Christian Values" and "Free-Market Capitalism" and "Democracy" as part of the history curriculum.

[Duque de Bragança]

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")

Audax, Ditalcus e Minurus, i.e the traitors, have been more and more referred as Turdetanians, not Lusitanians though.
And the quote, or variations, also have been used for the murder of Sertorius, the one who really started the latinisation of Lusitanians and other Hispanians, by Perpenna.

[Barrister]

While individuals should be left alone with their own identity and such, I think it is best if a country's inhabitants have a basic common understanding on some minimum of basic common identity that holds their country together. Ideally this identity is about liberal values, but clearly it is easier to establish a spin on history acceptable to everyone and then teach that.

I don't think that the mission of teaching history should be related to the building of a national identity, but to make people understand the present through the study of the past and how the country arrived to its current situation.

I would disagree.

I mean, you want to make sure that your national history is being taught with integrity and is not just propaganda, and should include your nations failings.  But a shared history and values is one of the biggest factors to building a national identity, and thus really can't be divorced from learning about history in general.