Some months ago the British National Party ran a website trying to demonstrate links between their ideology and the Christian Faith. It ended up as a series of headings. The story Jesus Christ told of the Good Samaritan makes nonsense of any such attempt to bring these two belief systems together. Equally striking are the frequent references in the Old Testament to the need to be kind to aliens. (So if they land, and 'want to see our leader', it's good ethics to be kind to them: don't be put off by 'The War of the Worlds' - the book, the picture, or the remake!)
More recently I stumbled across a BNP website called 'British Pride', which tries to make the link between their party's beliefs and what might be called British heritage. I was rather put off by the comment 'British history is no longer taught in schools', because I know from my own teaching experience and from my continuing reading of what goes on in schools that this is untrue. What is true is that far less history is taught in schools than it used to be, so that getting a balance becomes ever more difficult.
However, reading further I discovered that the BNP were confronting the fact that we are, historically, a nation of immigrants. They mention the DNA evidence that points to the stability of the population for thousands of years, and that therefore 'we', the white ones that is, are not Anglo-Saxons or even Celts but people who have been here since the dawn of time, as it were. If so, it is certainly very striking. But the website draws the wrong inference. What this demonstrates is that our history has always been heavily influenced by immigrants, the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons for instance, who made a cultural contribution out of all proportion to the much larger aboriginal population. So in a very real sense we have always been a nation of immigrants.
As any teacher knows, you can create instant hostility in the classroom by telling children to divide themselves into those with blue eyes and those with brown (and instant alienation for those who don't fit into either of those two categories.) Tribes and nations had their place in history, but are not an ideal survival mechanism in a world of weapons of mass destruction and of climate change.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
The Inca Empire is a popular History topic. In recent years archaeologists have begun to fill in some of the gaps in the story. Global warming has helped: melting ice in the Andes has recently brought to light teenaged sacrifical victims, a grim but very human link with another world.
In general, we are not good at linking with other worlds: we spend too much of our time trying to make sense of our own situations. Other civilizations are for 'leisure reading', akin to Science Fantasy. History, especially as taught in school, must, we are constantly told, be 'relevant'. So, History as taught in school today, certainly in schools in the United Kingdom, tends to be the History of our own country. The 'World' suddenly impinges on this in 1940 - but apparently only because the German panzers threaten to disrupt the national story.
'The day the war ended' by Martin Gilbert is a book about the end of that war, or a part of it, on May 8th 1945. For me this is an example of how any reading of History tends to be personal, as this happens to be the day of my birth. Alongside the record of the rejoicing that the war in Europe was over, the book presents a picture of a world where other armed struggles, often fuelled by hatreds much like those nurtured by the Nazis, were only just beginning. A group of German secondary school teachers once told me that English History teaching struck them as 'triumphalist'. I agreed with them, and still do.
The purpose of History seems to be the same as it must have been in prehistoric times: it was the history of the tribe, warnings from the past, and highly relevant because it was ultimately about survival. We need to wake up to the globalisation of the world and therefore of History. In the 21st Century we need, as a matter of survival, to draw from the stories of the whole tribe - the human race - not just on our own 'clan'.
In general, we are not good at linking with other worlds: we spend too much of our time trying to make sense of our own situations. Other civilizations are for 'leisure reading', akin to Science Fantasy. History, especially as taught in school, must, we are constantly told, be 'relevant'. So, History as taught in school today, certainly in schools in the United Kingdom, tends to be the History of our own country. The 'World' suddenly impinges on this in 1940 - but apparently only because the German panzers threaten to disrupt the national story.
'The day the war ended' by Martin Gilbert is a book about the end of that war, or a part of it, on May 8th 1945. For me this is an example of how any reading of History tends to be personal, as this happens to be the day of my birth. Alongside the record of the rejoicing that the war in Europe was over, the book presents a picture of a world where other armed struggles, often fuelled by hatreds much like those nurtured by the Nazis, were only just beginning. A group of German secondary school teachers once told me that English History teaching struck them as 'triumphalist'. I agreed with them, and still do.
The purpose of History seems to be the same as it must have been in prehistoric times: it was the history of the tribe, warnings from the past, and highly relevant because it was ultimately about survival. We need to wake up to the globalisation of the world and therefore of History. In the 21st Century we need, as a matter of survival, to draw from the stories of the whole tribe - the human race - not just on our own 'clan'.
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