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Content not context Rant-History

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By (user no longer on site) OP   
over a year ago

This has become more of a weird gripe of mine over the years.

It concerns the teaching of history that

sometimes tends to teach events in a vacuum or remove actors entirely.

Recently I have seen some weird stuff about the Vikings, people not knowing they invaded Ireland(Only British people are capable of this task apparently) or that there was an Irish campaign led by Flann Sinna against the Vikings at the same time as Alfred the Great which both ended up complementing each other.

Or the "glorious revolution" and English civil war in my own country of Scotland it tends to be discussed as some English affair as opposed to Scotland's actual heavy involvement in the outcome of both.

I feel this quickly becomes reductive and reduces the past and the people there to something less human to fill a narrative and turns what could be good discussions into two people rattling off factsheets.

What are your thoughts?

Do we tend to teach arbitrary events as if they happened in complete isolation to the actual real world around them?

Does it help to make the past less real and its world less interconnected?

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By *asyukMan
over a year ago

West London

History is rarely taught in a global context. In order to teach the history of events pertinent to your nation reasonably well you end up being quite narrow.

People rarely know what happened in other parts of the world concurrently. If it were then perspectives may be very different.

I think that they have made a better job of that in more recent years despite vociferous complaints.

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By *JB1954Man
over a year ago

Reading

My reply perhaps not so much history but a combination of history and ancestry. I suffer from a condition that has required several operations on both hands. I was asked if my DNA could be checked as a university was doing research into this condition. I agreed and all university had was a blood sample . They supplied a number . Now I knew that my surname was of Irish decent . When result came back. Yes Irish decent , but also viking. Informed that my condition originated in Scandinavian countries . I have blue eyes and now silver hair. Was blond as child teenager. So a lot of people would be shocked to realise who they descended from and which country . ?

As poster said history and perhaps ancestry are not taught ?

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

It's only history it's in the past look to the future the past as gone

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By *asyukMan
over a year ago

West London


"It's only history it's in the past look to the future the past as gone"

The mistakes of the past are repeated if you don't learn from them.

Do you not learn from your mistakes in your own life, or do you just pretend they never happened?

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago


"It's only history it's in the past look to the future the past as gone"

Without the past, there is no future

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago


"It's only history it's in the past look to the future the past as gone"

"The past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it.”

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By *oubleswing2019Man
over a year ago

Colchester

The OP has a valid point and concern in the teaching of history.

But is it all curated with a narrow focus these days ?

When I was a nipper, we spent endless terms on Medieval history (my favourite subject), WWII and Hitler's Rise To Power (which could really have been condensed down to 1 lesson (Nazi's bad. Killing millions of Jewish and other folks bad.), The Suez Oil Crisis (boring), The Cuban Missile Crisis (boring), the American War of Independence (boring).

I've revisited and pursued those subjects as an adult and found renewed and nuanced interest and understanding in them. But as a teenager, they had little interest to me.

The funny thing is, I don't consider that a narrow focus, it seems quite worldly to me.

What do schools teach in history these days ? I have no idea.

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