My earliest history lessons were from a teacher in a private school who, it much later transpired, had had no training or higher education. Lesson 1) The Romans came to Britain and civilised the barbaric Ancient Britons. Lesson 2) The Normans came to Britain and civilised the barbaric Anglo-Saxons. And the teacher's ancestor came over as a great friend of William the Conqueror. I went home puzzled about the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, and told my parents of the teacher's ancestry. "Her ancestor stole our land," said Dad, and to be fair to the lady, she did not mind when I told her this the next day.
For a long time I though it more likely that she was descended from a rabbit farmer, but it much later transpired that she was indeed descended from Willam de Warrene.
When I started teaching from a school syllabus which I was supposed to start at 1066 from books by someone called Unstead, it was still in the mould of history started with the Normans and all before was darkness.
Propaganda to justify landtheft, both here and in Ireland, still going strong.
I went on a course about using story to make history teaching effective, and chose to write about William sending a detachment down to Romney to punish the portsmen for dealing with a couple of ships from his fleet which had got lost. (We were in Kent and it was a Kentish story. We'd been advised by the author Barbara Willard to use sources of a paragraph or so that no-one else had written about.)
"You made it sound as if they committed an atrocity," complained another teacher.
"They did, they were sent to do it, and I used a Norman source," says I, and the advisor who set up the course had to mediate between the two parties, those who still believed in the dark ages and the civilised Normans, and those who had read a bit more. Heat was being generated. I wasn't alone, thank goodness.
When I started teaching from a school syllabus which I was supposed to start at 1066 from books by someone called Unstead, it was still in the mould of history started with the Normans and all before was darkness.
For a moment there I thought you said you used a textbook by Sellar and Yeatman.
I'm not sure that historians refer to the "dark" ages any more.
Nobody talks about them. They're too embarrassing.
Historians?
At the moment, it sometimes seems as if we are returning to the Dark Ages. If they didn't exist, we'll have to find some other dreadful time to return to...
How I would have loved to refer to Sellars and Yeatman. We did perform Marriott Edgar's "Battle of Hastings" in concert though. with a referee with a whistle and all, and a match commentator. "He were offside!" but what could they do?
Comments
For a long time I though it more likely that she was descended from a rabbit farmer, but it much later transpired that she was indeed descended from Willam de Warrene.
When I started teaching from a school syllabus which I was supposed to start at 1066 from books by someone called Unstead, it was still in the mould of history started with the Normans and all before was darkness.
Propaganda to justify landtheft, both here and in Ireland, still going strong.
I went on a course about using story to make history teaching effective, and chose to write about William sending a detachment down to Romney to punish the portsmen for dealing with a couple of ships from his fleet which had got lost. (We were in Kent and it was a Kentish story. We'd been advised by the author Barbara Willard to use sources of a paragraph or so that no-one else had written about.)
"You made it sound as if they committed an atrocity," complained another teacher.
"They did, they were sent to do it, and I used a Norman source," says I, and the advisor who set up the course had to mediate between the two parties, those who still believed in the dark ages and the civilised Normans, and those who had read a bit more. Heat was being generated. I wasn't alone, thank goodness.
No. It's for a science fiction novel, where it all goes a bit Von Daniken.
MMM
Nobody talks about them. They're too embarrassing.
Historians?
At the moment, it sometimes seems as if we are returning to the Dark Ages. If they didn't exist, we'll have to find some other dreadful time to return to...