From what perspective do British schoolchildren learn about the Revolutionary War and the events leading up to it (Boston Massacre, etc.)? Given the close ties that exist today between the UK and the US I assume they aren’t still bitter about the outcome and, considering that the U.S. likely could not have played the decisive roles that we did in WW I&II if we were not a sovereign nation, the defeat was probably a blessing in disguise for the British. That being said, most Brits I know are of the patriotic sort, and would probably not want their kids to simply be taught that such a humiliating event (at the time) in their nation’s history was actually “for the better”. Does anybody have any insight into this? Thanks!
My understanding (and I’m an American but this has come up before on this board) is that the US War of Independence is not taught at all in British schools. They just have too much other history to cover. That war is important to Americans, but not really to anyone else.
You can probably find an earlier thread on topic with the search engine.
I’ve no idea about today’s children, but when I was at school, it wasn’t on my curriculum.
History is a broad topic in the British secondary school curriculum (or at least it was when I went to school - a good few years ago) - we spent maybe one or two lessons on the American Revolution - but most of that was covering the background and politics of the time, rather than the detail of any particular battles.
It’s just a piece of factual history to us - not relevant enough to be humiliating (it didn’t happen to anyone alive now, or even any political regime recognisably still in existence), not really even in the collective conscious until someone asks a question like yours.
Yes, we’ve done this at least once before, and not that long ago, and most of the responses were like the above.
If we assume British history starts about 1500 years ago, that’s 1500 years of wars to learn about, many which were existential in nature to the British. That little spat with the colonies was a minor blip on the radar (and one tends to downplay the wars one loses, too).
To be honest, in my opinion, the American Revolutionary War isn’t a big thing in British history. Some lost colonies that soon became friends (albeit with the odd hiccup) is just one of those things. Britain had much more pressing matters, before and after the ARW, to attend to, at least one of which was an actual existential threat. A big deal for the US, obviously, much less so for us. I hesitate to say that there were bigger fish to fry, but there’s some truth to that.
As for British history education, well, there’s a lot of that to cover. The status of parts of the now-USA as former colonies is just part of a larger story, a part that pre-dated the real empire building.
Well how about the Pig War then?
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The Pig War was a confrontation in 1859 between American and British authorities over the boundary between the United States and British North America. […] The Pig War, so called because it was triggered by the shooting of a pig, is also called the Pig Episode, the Pig and Potato War, the San Juan Boundary Dispute or the Northwestern Boundary Dispute. The pig was the only “casualty” of the war, making the conflict otherwise bloodless.
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Don’t tell me you guys gloss over that one too.
It’s certainly up there with The War of Jenkins Ear and the crazy 40 minute shootout in the war with Zanzibar
So much of the view depends on one’s viewpoint. For Canadians, the War of 1812 is a major influence (we survived as a separate entity, which is one definition of winning), but from the British viewpoint, it was a minor offshoot of the whole Napoleonic War era.
Britain had a much more bitter struggle with a much bigger colony in the Indian subcontinent. In Britain today it’s easy to find people from all sides who have direct memories of the various conflicts and their fallout.
A 230 year old argument between middle class white men doesn’t really compete in terms of what kids refer to as ‘relevance’.
I don’t know what the curriculum’s like now, but when I was at school we started with the Romans in Britain, which is going back 2065 years, or thereabouts.
That’s kind of interesting. I’m not surpised that it isn’t considered an important part of British history, but I would have guessed it would be covered as an important part of world history.
I’m sure that I’m biased, but you would think that the origins of the most powerful country in the world would count as noteworthy regardless of where you were studying history, and maybe a little more so if its origins were strongly tied to your own country. Oh well.
ETA: US schools should start working on the new curriculum with a focus on Chinese origins 
its relevant but not in the nauseating, irrelevant detail-laden, jingostic way its taught in this country. some people rebelled, successfully won their freedom, voila… not much else to write.
That seems to be a naive point of view. The events of that time shaped the politics and ideology of those living here since, and therefore impacted their behavior, in turn shaping the way in which our contry has interacted with the rest of the world. Due to our disparate amount of economic and military power, our impact on the world has been larger than that of other countries during this time frame.
It doesn’t really matter if you think it’s good or bad, it’s still history.
That the United States were a group of British colonies that rebelled is all most schoolchildren would ever need to know. This is the sort of thing that doesn’t even need to be in the curriculum, it’s a single sentence and people pick it up outside of school. The specific events in the American Revolution are of little importance.
Good point. I just sort of arbitrarily picked the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon era and the introduction of the English language, but the Roman era did have a big influence even on subsequent cultures.
Well, there’s lots of reasons that modern individual rights and democracy and engineering and science and rationalism and rights of man happened - hey some of them happened in Britain, and some France and some in North America. It’s all cool, well apart from the slavery that took you a long time to get over. But you are the best!
Right, and all you need to know about the Norman conquest is that it happened. There wasn’t a reason for it and it didn’t have consequences.
So the Norman conquest of England should be a part of every education system’s curriculum on the planet?
There is a finite amount of time in a school day. Although it would “good” for various topics to be in a curriculum, you have to weigh the amount of time you spend on things with their perceived benefit. Also, a lot of what we teach children isn’t history, it’s simplistic national mythology. A proper teaching of Revolution-era American history would take a lot of time. If you want to explain to explain American world dominance, you would also have to extend your time frame forward, possibly even to the early 20th century. You also require a level of development and sophistication on the part of the student that basically requires they be at least in the last 2 or so years of high school, specifically learning history. For the majority of students, this doesn’t happen. Teaching 10 year olds that some Americans dressed as American Indians threw tea into a harbour doesn’t do much for their education.
So how long does it take the typical British school to cover the entire history of the British peoples? For example, how long is spent on Henry VIII and the rest of the Tudors? How much time is spent on continental European history?
I’m just wondering how you get through all of it. I know that in my high school history classes in the US, we ran out of time towards the end and sort of raced through 20th century American history.