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

Factual Questions
141

She probably did ‘20th Century History’ GCSE. There are other history GCSEs that are broader. History teaching isn’t particularly well structured, but there are so many competing interests that it’s impossible to please them all.

At least these days secondary school history isn’t all spinning Jennies and other farm machinery. :smiley:

I said ‘nobody cares’ in the context of someone saying that we don’t teach about American Independence because we’re, apparently, averse to talking about our past defeats. Nobody cares about losing the colonies. (Well, I’m sure there’s the odd nutter who does, but you can find extreme outliers for any POV).

And I did also say that we have a limited amount of time to teach a lot of history. Several people have said that. It’s a good point, but not a new one.

I’m genuinely curious - what, exactly, do you think that British schoolchildren would learn from being taught more about the AWI?

142

I am an American, and we definitely did not cover British history in much detail or really anything about British history that did not directly relate to the US when I was in school. It pretty much just came up in the context of the American Revolution and then WWII. Oh, we learned about the Magna Carta too, but again primarily just its relevance to the US Constitution.

To throw out an anecdote, when I was about 11 years old I remember seeing the TV adaptation of Back Home. It’s about an English girl who was evacuated to the US during WWII, and by the time she comes home is quite Americanized and has a hard time readjusting to life in the UK. There’s a classroom scene where the teacher asks if anyone can explain the causes of the Civil War. The girl raises her hand and starts talking about slavery and state’s rights. She’s surprised and embarrassed when the teacher tells her they’re not discussing the American Civil War.

My (college educated and fairly intelligent) mother was sitting right there, so I asked her what the English Civil War was about. She said “They didn’t have one. They must be learning about the French Revolution.” :smack:

I am now also a college educated adult myself, and can’t really blame my mother for her ignorance on this point because I’m pretty sure I never had a class that mentioned the English Civil War either. I was well out of high school before I knew there actually had been one. I spent a couple of weeks in England when I was in college and specific Civil War events that had happened locally were mentioned by tour guides, but otherwise I’ve only heard of it through non-academic reading. To be honest, most of the little I do know about the English Civil War (Cromwell had a king executed?) is because it was fictionalized as part of the backstory to the Discworld novels.

143

American - we had NO world history in our curriculum. Two years of American History. From what I know about the world from my pre-college education, other nations do not exist unless we are in a war with them. We BARELY got through American History - in fact, I don’t think we managed to get farther than mentioning “Vietnam War” and “Watergate.”

Of course, my high school was lousy. However, we did get an introduction to economics, political science, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and they DID teach us how to budget, balance a checkbook, and invest in the stock market.

(I do have a History minor from college where I took no “traditional” American History.)

144

How funny - I was going to include that TV minseries/book in my post too, only it was too long already. :smiley:

I do have the impression that most Americans learnt more about Britain than they did about other European countries - not that they learnt that much about any of them (due to the aforementioned problems with ‘too much history, too little time’), but that British history was taught slightly more than the others. This might well be observer bias.

145

I learned a bit more about Spanish history in Spanish language class (e.g., I remember a reading on the story of El Cid).

146

Just goes to show how varied history teaching is. I’m an Ontarian, 42 years old, and we barely learned about the existence of the Boer War.

[The American Revolution was covered, though not in great depth; there was some mention in passing about the importance of the fleeing United Empire Loyalists]

We had a section on the Riel Rebellion, and did a fun historical-type recreation of the Family Compact vs. William Lyon Mackenzie as a sort of role-playing game.

147

What we learned about Spain as children mostly related to its explorers and conquistadors in America: Columbus, of course, De Soto, Balboa, Cortez and Pizarro. And then we learned a bit about Spanish Florida.

We covered the Cuban War (Spanish American War) only lightly, and the lesson to be taken from that war was how easily slanted news reporting could lead the US into conflict. It is viewed as a cautionary tale on the perils of Yellow Journalism.

We learned nothing about the Reconquista.

148

Hell, I’m a Brit with a postgraduate degree (not in history), so I guess you could call me educated, and I couldn’t tell you what the English Civil War was all about beyond Cromwell wanting to get rid of the monarchy and actually managing it for a short amount of time.

149

The very little we learned about British history may well have been more than we learned about anyplace else in Europe, at least if you’re talking about the past 1,000 years or so. I remember covering Ancient Greece and Rome in middle school, though.

I’m perhaps not the best person to talk about the typical American high schools, because at the end of my freshman year I transferred to a special program with a unique curriculum. We had a wide variety of social studies classes available to us, and many were not about history at all but rather current events, politics, or social science. But I’ve just pulled up the list of required courses at my first high school on its website, and it’s pretty much as I remember it. As freshmen (9th graders) we were required to take a full year of American history. This picked up where the year of American history required in the 8th grade left off. For sophomores (10th grade) there’s a full year of world history, then juniors (11th grade) do semester of American history/current events and a semester of economics. Taking these courses is all you need to do to meet the graduation requirements in social studies. A few other courses about ancient history, European history, etc., are available as electives. Although requirements will vary from district to district, I think this is fairly typical. FWIW this particular district is considered a very good one, consistently ranked as one of the top 10 in the US.

It would be possible for a student today to graduate from this high school without studying any European history except what was mentioned in American history or included in the required world history class. Looking at the course description, world history starts with the Stone Age and covers all of human history up to the present day, so I doubt they’re going into a lot of depth about anything. IIRC at the time I was in school then 10th graders were required to take a semester-long class called “Russia and China” and then a semester of some other world history. Since I changed schools I never had this class, but I guess it was meant to teach us about the major Communist powers. This was several years after the end of the Cold War and sounded pretty dated to me even at the time. I see now that the “Russia and China” class is not only no longer mandatory, it isn’t offered at all anymore.

150

IIRC my Ontaio history classes, each year covered various topics:
One year was the history of the world in ancient times up to about 1700, although we really did not cover it in a lot o detail. I think the emphasis was things like “cradle of civilization” and the Nile, Greek and Roman expansion, the dark ages and germanic invasions, etc. Opportunities to do projects about pyramids and mummies.

One year was the whole “settlement of British North America” (aka Canada). Too many French explorers to remember them all.

One year was the rest of North America, and some brief mention of Simon Bolivar and South America. The biggest deal was the number of diffeent explorers of the various parts of the Americas, from the Conquistadors to Balboa and then into the expansion of the Americas - the Louisiana purchase, the revolution, etc.

One year was Canada from the British conquest of the French up to Confederation and the CPR.

When you hear about the war of 1812, it seems the Canadians won, ha ha. ABout the Revolution, OTOH, when you read the actual declaration of independence, it mentions a lot more about struggles between the governors/king and legislatures over who enacted and enforced laws, while my history class seemed to basically mention taxation without representation and billeting troops as the two main causes.

Canadians (or at least Ontario) seemed to mention a lot more about “manifest destiny” and the fear that the Americans would march in and take the colonies if we didn’t defend ouselves. The confedration of the Canadian colonies, the building of the CPR railroad to assert ownership, the mounties (North-West Moutned Police) were all taken to ensure British sovereignity was asserted. I suppose the local politicians had the example of Texas to spur them on to prevent American encroachment.

The lesson I recall about the Ontario and Quebec rebellions of 1837 was that after the American Revolution the British government felt that being too lax about local government was a mistake, and they actually clamped down on the remaining colonies a lot harder. It took the 1837 action to make them realize that evolving real self-government was the best way to prevent a repeat.

Anything too recent or controversial was usually left off the curriculum to avoid inciting political fights - usually history ended with 1900, especially local history. Even Loius Riel is still controversial. Basically he was a schizo demagogue who made the serious mistake of deciding he had the authority to execute British citizens. That pretty much ended any chance of a negotiated settlement of Metis grievances. However, it does give rise to the interesting trivia that the last naval battle in Canada was in the middle of the prairies, whne the Metis ambushed a steamboat.

151

Michael Medved (some kind of right wing disc radio guy who also reviews films) said last week that the American Revolution was the most important event in the world in the last 500 years. Yep, that’s what he said.

152

Teaching that for an entire semster would be college-level depth, or your teachers were exceedingly lazy. Neither period was all that long, even as a chunk of British history.

Sorry, this is so late. I don’t post as often these days.

153

I wouldn’t say that it’s the most important, but I’d say it deserves a spot in the top 10. Other contenders off the top of my head:

The French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon
The Protestant Reformation (including the rise of Protestant England) (though this was more of a process than an “event”)
The Industrial Revolution (also arguably more of a “process” than a discrete event)
The Russian Revolution
World War I
World War II
The conquest of Latin America by Spain and Portugal (and the ensuing decimation of Native Americans by European disease) (again, arguably a process rather than an event)
The publication of On the Origin of Species
The development of nuclear weapons
The invention of the internal combustion engine

And I’m sure a dozen others I am forgetting, and others I am omitting because they just don’t make the cut (the Engish Civil War, the American Civil War, the birth of Israel, the end of the Raj and partition of India, the rise of Frederick the Great, the rise of Chairman Mao, moon landing, etc.)

There are a lot of things that could be added to the list that are really processes more than events, such as the development of the scientific method, the harnessing of electricity, the development of computers and the internet, and the rise of colonialism (including the development of the British Raj in India).
At the risk of being an arrogant jingoist :wink: , the American Revolution deserves a spot on the list, on a couple of grounds:

  1. As noted above, the US revolutionaries were the first ones to put into practice the Enlightenment principles that much of the world now takes for granted. (Most particularly government by consent of the governed, but also the establishment of essential human rights with regard to life, liberty and property.) To begrudge the US its contribution to democratic rule and human rights in the world just seems like stubborn anti-Americanism to me.

  2. Like it or not, the US is the world’s superpower, so its birth as a nation is of considerable world import on that ground alone.

Whether or not you would agree that the American Revolution belongs at the top of the list, it is hardly grounds for astonishment that someone thinks so. :slight_smile:

154

A British school term isn’t a semester – it’s either a third or (in some places these days) a sixth of a year.

The Tudor period takes in the renaissance, the reformation and the beginnings of empire, to name only a the most obvious topics. And the Roman occupation of Britain was around 400 years – almost the same as the period of time now since the founding of the Jamestown colony, for instance. Whether that’s a long period or not depends on your point of view, I suppose. :wink:

I hate to make assumptions about someone of whom I know as little as I do of Mr Medved, but I’m hovering on the brink of inferring a degree of partiality on his part.

155

On a similar note, I visited Yuanming Yuan in Beijing, and my wife was astounded that I had never heard of the Eight Nation Army’s attack on China.

I wonder how many Americans learn in history class that their soldiers (and others) invaded China in 1900. Certainly every Chinese student learns it!

156

I think I might have quoted the wrong post, but I am on my blackberry, lol.

I know that the Boer War had as much as it did in our textbook, because our history teacher openly pointed it out. He was opining that Canadians “forgot” about the Korean war, and showed the large disparity (1 paragraph vs. 1 chapter) as his proof.

157

All I remember is that Laurier was in a bind because English Canadians favoured conscription and French Canadians were opposed.

158

That’s all I retained, but our particular textbook went into their deployment, and talked at length about the Afrikaans people, and the different campaigns Canadians fought in. Oh, that and some battleship Laurier built called “The Rainbow” or something terribly effeminate like that. :smiley:

159

First off, there was no King of England at the time of the American Revolution, with the Kingdoms of England and Scotland having merged to form the united Kingdom of Great Britain with the Acts of Union in 1707.

Next, Great Britain was a much a “nation state” then as it today–surely you’re not suggesting that the feudal system was still in effect!

Next, as has been mentioned previously, King George III was a native English speaker.

Finally, at the time of the American Revolution, Great Britain was indeed one of the most powerful nations on the planet. Few other nations at the time (or today, for that matter) could fight a war across the Atlantic on the shores of another continent. France’s assistance was invaluable, of course, particularly to help even the odds against Britain’s naval superiority. Both Great Britain and France were considered to be “great powers,” with the time of the so-called “superpowers” some centuries in the future.

160

All in all, I guess I am somewhat surprised at the evident lack of coverage of the American Revolution. Because it is covered in such excruciating detail in the U.S., you Brits might forgive us for assuming that it would at least be mentioned. In any event, I do indeed think that the American Revolution is significant beyond its importance to Americans–the American Revolution was also an important event in the history of democracy. The U.S. was the first modern democratic state, and its establishment led the way away from the monarchies common in 1776 to the democracies common today.

As for what history I was taught in school, I moved around a lot as a child, so I managed to get California state history, Texas state history, and Tennessee state history, along with “social studies” every year. Social studies included both basic U.S. history as well as world history. For the latter, we learned about Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, ancient Egypt, the ancient Greeks and Romans, etc.

In high school, I got much more in-depth history courses. I took both AP (Advanced Placement) U.S. History, as well as AP European History, and got university credit for both.

Finally, I’ve always been interested in British history in general, especially that history prior to the American Revolution, thinking of it as being my history before the establishment of the U.S. I’ve read a great deal of history after graduating from college, including British history. Looking through the curriculum linked earlier, I’m pretty familiar with all of the topics listed–from the Norman Conquest to the Tudors to the English Civil War to the Glorious Revolution. I think it’s pretty safe to say that most Americans know little or nothing about the latter two.