From what perspective is the American Revolutionary War taught to British schoolchildren?

Factual Questions
281

Oh, fuck. I remember the corn laws.

shudder

282

I seem to remember I covered crop rotation about ten times. At least it felt like that.

283

Sounds as exciting as Medievel Irish Land Tenure and The Church.

284

I maintain that if 20th-century British history was taught using P.G. Wodehouse stories every student would immediately improve.

285

What Ho!

I mean, I say, rather.

286

Yeah, absolutely agree. I love history but all I can remember of 2 years of secondary school history classes is our teacher’s valiant but doomed attempt to reenact the Spartans’ (valiant but doomed) defence of Thermopylae by standing between two rows of desks pretending to be brandishing a spear. :smiley:

And we definitely didn’t do nuffing about the Kerfuffle in the Kolonies. Sorry.

287

OMG the Corn Laws. Studied them for months, it felt like, and all I can remember is There were some laws…something to do with farming, maybe…but I could be wrong on that point.

Serioulsy, that’s it. And I LOVE history.

288

A common refrain I hear from many who, later in life, enjoyed history tremendously, was that they did not enjoy history when taught as a subject in high school.

My theory is that this has three basic causes:

  1. Often, history is taught with a particular moral or political message in mind. In the generation before me, it was (apparently) all about the glories of British civilization; in my generation, as a corrective, it was all about the contributions of natives, women and minorities. Being preached at, however worthy the topic, is boring.

  2. Some teachers are just not very inspiring. Luck of the draw, that.

  3. Most of all, learning history is (to my mind) somewhat like learning a language; you need to know a certain amount just to put new stuff you are learning in context. It is the relationship between things that makes it interesting. Otherwise, it can seem like a bunch of unconnected events and dates - just a meaningless jumble.

Learning the basics is just not going to be as much fun - it’s like the difference beween learing verb endings and having an interesting conversation in (say) French.