British Schools

[porphyry]

"The researchers also warned that a lack of subject knowledge among teachers - particularly at primary level - was leading to history being taught in a 'shallow way leading to routine and superficial learning'.

Lessons in difficult topics were too often 'bland, simplistic and unproblematic' and bored pupils."


Does this surprise anyone?


If you want to become physically ill, read this this.

It details how schools teachers in Britain are beginning to skip the Holocaust so as not to offend the delicate sensabilities of their Moslem students who deny any Jews were murderd by the Nazis.

Comments

[stefanie-bean.livejournal.com]

That's incredible. Isn't it France where you can actually get locked up for denying the Holocaust?

In the US, the kids are lucky if they even make it to "bland and simplistic." I have a friend who's a 7th grade teacher, and they're being pressured to skip history altogether in favor of standardized test preparation.

Oh pass me a bucket.......

[benicek.livejournal.com]

Malkhos, this is the Daily Mail you're quoting; well-known purveyors of masturbatory right-wing, crypto-racist bile. The same paper that was an enthusiastic supporter of the British Union of Fascists in the 1930's. Nothing it prints can be taken at face value. The report they're quoting probably criticised three or four schools out of the whole country. The Muslim population on England and Wales is only 3.2% but the way the Daily Mail bangs on about it you'd think it was more like 32%.

British school history is "bland, simplistic and unproblematic" precisely because it is fixated with Nazism and the two world wars. I didn't learn about the Reformation or 19th century European history until after I left school.

[benicek.livejournal.com]

You can get locked up for denying the holocaust in several European countries, including Germany of course. But not in Britain.

Re: Oh pass me a bucket.......

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I'm sure your point is well-taken. I'll be more careful in future. I'm not really famaliar with the editorial predlictions of British papers other than the Telegraph and the Gaurdian.

But having worked for a while in the public schools here, it is all to easy to believe.

Re: Oh pass me a bucket.......

[petrusplancius.livejournal.com]

When I was doing some teaching at a (fairly respectable) university a few years back, I remember talking to a colleague about the abysmal ignorance of most of the students with regard to anything historical, and she remarked of that her rule of thumb was that you could safely refer to the Renaissance but were likely to get blank looks if you referred to the Reformation! This meant that it was pointless to make any historical references or comparisons except of the most obvious kind. It is a desperate failure in any educative system not to give people any impression of the broad sweep of history or the changing character of the successive periods; it means that they are wholly unable to fit anything into any sort of historical context. It is partly, I think, to do with the obsession eith 'relevance', the feeling that the 'kids' should easily be able to relate everything to their immediate experience. As if they would have no interest in becoming acquainted with things that are strange and new and unfamiliar and even, perhaps, fairly ancient.

[ladyprufrock.livejournal.com]

This sounds sadly familiar to one who has been inside one of those god-awful places within the last decade.

When I was in high school, the "earth science" teacher took my class on a "field trip" to the downtown movie theater to view Twister. For Spanish class, the field trip was to Evita. We watched John Wayne movies in history class. My only memories of psychology class are watching movies, which included Flowers for Algernon and Tootsie.

It gets better. In a college business class (graduate level!) I was forced to watch the atrocious Erin Brockovich.

Re: Oh pass me a bucket.......

[benicek.livejournal.com]

My 1980's school history lessons were preoccupied with the Nazis, Stalin and the cold war. I think they partially succeeded in being relevant. We were still in the cold war at that time; the workings and history of totalitarian super-power regimes, and the nuclear stand-off, were current issues. But it missed a lot out which was perhaps much more relevant to living in modern Britain. The history of the whole British empire, for example, and its quite recent dismantling. Most of the non-white population of this country have their roots in the former British Empire. The Irish struggle for independence never got a mention either; even though we lived under constant threat of Irish Republican terrorist attack (police bomb sniffer dogs when even a minor politician visited our school; precautionary evacuations of railway stations when we went shopping in London). My school ran a history trip to Belgium, but only to go and see WW1 trenches and war cemeteries; I don't think they even bothered stopping at those medieval cities with which trade was the basis for much of the wealth of Elizabethan England. Even the WW2 stuff missed out so much that was more relevant to contemporary politics than Hitler. I doubt if many British people know that we invaded Iran during WW2 to secure oil supplies. It's kind of important to know these little details before you pick up a national newspaper controlled by some pretty dubious vested interests.

Re: Oh pass me a bucket.......

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

The thing in that article tht matched my own expereince was the lack of specialist training in school teachers. All too recently I had to work for a few years as a teacher's assistant, which meant that I was the most highly educated employee of the school district, yet I was only considered fit to occupy the lowest position.

In order to become a teacher here, one has only to take a number and range of courses in the subject field that is just a little lss than a minor (12 college hours, compared to 18 for a minor). Their major field is 'education' which means that they take courses in how to arrange a library for the recreational use of factory workers (rather than research or learning), that it is as important to 'teach' Dickens by having the High school (10th year) students draw pictures of the characters (out of their own imagiantin rather than any research) as to analyze the origin of Dickens' social cirticism in contemporary conditions because some students are 'visual learners' and such things. Normal course work in class consisted of having the students read three pages of text or watch a half hour film and then compelte a 'worksheet' in which they read sentences quoted from the source with one word left out and were required to fill in that word--the teachers check the work mainly to see that they wrote something more than that they wrote the right thing. On one rare occasion I heard a teacher give a full half-hour lecture on the Second Punic War, only to find that every single thing the teacher said was factually wrong (starting with the assertion that Hannibal was 'black' in the American sesne--I wish I had taken detailed notes). The science and math teachers complained when they were required to start reporting their grades via computer and to communicate with the admisntration via e-mail. I personally had to show many of them how to open a window and establish an e-mail account.

On my last day I spent the whole time shirking in the teacher's lounge, where I heard a discussion between a half-dozen of the English teachers. They all recounted their experience of taking the 'certification' exam that, in conjunction with their education degrees, allowed them to teach. Each one had the same memory. They were asked to analyze literature that they had never heard of let alone read (authors like Proust or Johnson, or Shelley--'Who the hell read the Romantic poets!' one said--I ws editing my wife's dissertatin on Keats at the time), being condfident that they had failed the test, and then their relief when the mail came saying they had passed. One of the history teachers--the chair of the department--was once asked by the librarian what the last book he had read was. For some reason he choose that moment to confess that he had not read a single book in the last five years.

I suppose this is why I am inclined to accept any horrible outrage reported about public education.

Fortunately, I can;t recall a single detial of my own High school history curriculum, except that it was all worksheet driven also. I take that back--I vividly recall just one image, an illustration from a text book that was meant to illustrate the fall of the Roman Empire. It showed a formation of late first century legionaries wearing lorica segmentata (cribbed from Trajan's column probably) being overwhelemed by a disorderd mob of stereotypical cavemen, wearing animal skins and wielding clubs.

Re: Oh pass me a bucket.......

[petrusplancius.livejournal.com]

That seems to be the general pattern now. It annoys me exceedingly that if one goes into any bookshop (except in one or two university towns) and looks at the German history section, there are nothing but books on Hitler and the Nazis! I was educated sufficiently long ago to have had a very broad historical education, although I did not study the subject beyond O-level. Nothing, though, later than the First World War, and nothing about the Empire and Commonwealth. As a special subject I studied the Risorgimento; I remmember reading Trevelyan's life of Garibaldi, who was such a favourite of the Victorian liberals. I am suspicious about an undue concern with 'relevance' because I believe that the greatest benefit that young people can gain from the subject is to become acquainted with different worlds, i.e. to appreciate that people have thought and behaved in utterly different ages and places; only then can history become a real stimulus to the imagination. Not that I would deny, of course, that it is important for people to understand the historical roots of contemporary problems.

Re: Oh pass me a bucket.......

[petrusplancius.livejournal.com]

That of course was in response to benicek. As for those appalling experiences with the public education system, dear malkhos, I am sure that things are much the same here in Britain. They are better, though, in some parts of Europe where there is still some general respect for the inherent value of learning.

Re: Oh pass me a bucket.......

[benicek.livejournal.com]

I applied for teacher training years ago and was interviewed by a college. They started asking me questions about government education policy and the effect it might have social problems experienced by kids living in poverty black spots. I told them that it was feeble tinkering, would have no effect of all and was a load of specious crap. That was the end of the interview. They rejected me. No mention at all of the subject I wanted to teach (history).

I knew quite a few teachers when I lived in Bristol. I sat in on some history lessons in a secondary school there too. It was just a form of riot control. In one lesson the young teacher tried lamely to force a class to pick up their pens for about 20 minutes, and then this huge boy started doing kung-fu moves on him with a broom handle, and that was the end of the lesson.

My impression was, basically, that teaching has become just a form of social work. That's what the public demand. They want all their family mental problems to be solved for them by the government, and the government is obliged to pretend that this is possible. State schools are now expected to deal with bullying, child abuse, sex education, drug addiction, childhood obesity....the list goes on, and all without recourse to violence, as was the norm until the 1960s. A desire to become a social worker has therefore become the main criteria for selecting trainee teachers. The job is badly paid and often physically dangerous. I can easily believe that report which the Daily Mail quoted. It's just the motives which they misrepresent. I'm sure there are Islamic ghettos in Britain where schoolkids are so anti-semitic that teaching the holocaust to them becomes too frightening a task to contemplate. Some teachers probably wriggle out of it not because they are kowtowing to some twisted politically correctness but because they are too scared to get involved. I wouldn't either.

Re: Oh pass me a bucket.......

[benicek.livejournal.com]

I read that Tevelyan book! All three volumes of it. What a great character Garibaldi was. I was obsessed with him for a while. You must be only the second British person I've come across who has heard of him (and not just the biscuit). The other was monk at Buckfast Abbey, who despised him. Haha.

Funny thing going on with biscuits and the Risorgimento. Have you noticed? I emailed my findings to Radio 4 and they read them out on air during one of their lighter programmes. GARIBALDI was born in NICE and defeated the BOURBONS.

I agree with you about "different worlds". The Romans are a good example. Their effect on our culture was huge but it is perhaps not appreciated how unlike ours their culture was: how complicated and all encompassing their religious system was; how the client-patron relationship held the whole of society together; that they had no real concept of race in the modern sense....alien people in many ways.

Re: Oh pass me a bucket.......

[(Anonymous)]

The obsession with the Nazis is because the Nazis were fascist (far-right). That way the British educational establishment gets to demonize the entire right, and glorify the political left.

Re: Oh pass me a bucket.......

[benicek.livejournal.com]

If that was true why did they teach us so much about Stalin? The British educational establishment has been controlled by right-wing or centre-right governments since 1979.

Re: Oh pass me a bucket.......

[benicek.livejournal.com]

You're quoting Fox news at me? The Rupert Murdoch channel? Do you really expect me to take anything that guy publishes seriously? Not a chance.

Re: Oh pass me a bucket.......

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

That's about right. But you don't have Dewey over there.

Re: Oh pass me a bucket.......

[benicek.livejournal.com]

Decimal system Dewey?

Re: Oh pass me a bucket.......

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

The same he reformed American education--decided its purpsoe should be to keep factory workers effcient and docile. This was seen as an 'egalitarian' alternative to the three tier German sysytem (Gymnasium, Realschule, polytechnik)

Re: Oh pass me a bucket.......

[benicek.livejournal.com]

He sounds like Henry Ford.

Re: Oh pass me a bucket.......

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

just so.