Fri Jan 28 11:00:39 2011
I am so sorry to hear of the death of David Kato. I was even more sorry to hear that a number of people have died in a similar manner, and also in Mukono. I taught in the Senior School in Mukono from 1966 to 1967. The year I went back to England they repealed the anti-homosexual law regarding adults, and this has benefitted the country in all sorts of ways, for example by removing the possibility of blackmail. It never ceases to surprise me that a civilized country like Uganda hasn't done the same.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
normthestorm
The Guardian Comment
The Guardian Comment
27 January 2011 11:25PM
I am sorry to hear of the death of David Kato. I was a teacher in the Senior School in Mukono from 1966/67, employed locally, but introduced to the school through the Anglican Church of Uganda. I am also sorry to see that there have apparently been a spate of killings of homosexual people in Mukono. The colonial laws on homosexuality which Uganda inherited at Independence need to be re-thought. By coincidence it was the year that I left Uganda that the laws against homosexuality in England began to be abolished. It really is time Uganda did the same. They are essentially British laws, not African. However, to bring Uganda's laws into the 21st Century lawmakers need to listen to the academics at Makerere, not the 'Rolling Stone'.
Monday, January 24, 2011
What History teaching needs
"We don't need a big wing, or a little wing - we just need pilots!" So said Lord Olivier, playing Sir Hugh Dowding in the film re-enactment of The Battle of Britain. He said it with a world-weary sigh, which no doubt accurately reflected the feelings of the Air Chief Marshal.
I think a similar thought idea must have crossed the minds of history teachers recently, as the Air-Marshals of School History square up for a fight. It has certainly crossed mine, now happily retired from 30 years of teaching History in a Comprehensive school.
Mr Gove has made an important contribution by recognising the value of History in the school curriculum, but he is now in danger of stirring up a heated and unecessary debate.
History teaching doesn't need just the facts, or just the skills, or even just the knowledge. It just needs the time to teach it, and good History Teachers who know all about teaching a subject which is both conservative and subversive. Advice from people like Sean Lang and Chris Culpin - who know what a good syllabus and the inside of a classroom look like - is also needed.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Mr Gove and the History Curriculum - The story continues
"One of the problems that we have at the moment is that in the history curriculum we only have two names [of historical figures]", Mr Gove announced on the "Today" programme this morning. The same article on the BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12227491 quotes earlier pronouncements: "At the Conservative Party Conference, Mr Gove said it was a "tragedy of our time" that children were growing up ignorant of the history of the United Kingdom.
"Children are given a mix of topics at primary, a cursory run through Henry VIII and Hitler at secondary and many give up the subject at 14, without knowing how the vivid episodes of our past became a connected narrative," he said. Mr Gove has already asked the historian Simon Schama to advise on how British history could be "put at the heart of a revised national curriculum" ".
Simon Schama is, of course, a brilliant historian, with a way of weaving fascinating narratives. But he probably wouldn't last five minutes in a Comeprehensive School classroom, and even in an Academy students would probably switch off after ten. History teaching is a very different art from being a historian, and I would be more confident that Mr Gove was on the right lines if he said he was consulting history teachers, history inspectors, and history publishers. (And if we must have a TV personality as a figurehead I would in any case recommend the more down-to-earth Michael Wood.)
Mr Gove is wrong about the History Curriculum in a number of respects. The most important respect is his misunderstanding of the place of narrative. Narrative involves many things. It may be the teacher telling a story like the Battle of Hastings. It may be that a kind of 'Big Story' is revealed when a class follows a theme, such as the development of technology over a couple of centuries, during the course of a whole term's teaching.
It may be simply presenting a series of dates, like the dates of English Monarchs that used to be found on pencils, rulers, and the back of exercise books. However, one thing it cannot be is a set of facts about our history that we can all agree on. There are, at any rate outside Conservative Party Conferences, competing narratives of British History, and indeed of all History. Making sense of competing narratives - for example the story of kings and the story of peasants - is something that history teachers are pretty good at, and they do a very good job of preparing young people to make sense of an increasingly confusing world.
In fact 'knowing how the vivid episodes of our past became a connected narrative' i.e. why some historians manage to put forward particular theories of the past such as the importance of individuals, the influence of Geography or Economics, or ideas such as 'The British Empire was a good thing' are precisely the kind of very sophisticated arguments that young people are introduced to by the study of History.
"Children are given a mix of topics at primary, a cursory run through Henry VIII and Hitler at secondary and many give up the subject at 14, without knowing how the vivid episodes of our past became a connected narrative," he said. Mr Gove has already asked the historian Simon Schama to advise on how British history could be "put at the heart of a revised national curriculum" ".
Simon Schama is, of course, a brilliant historian, with a way of weaving fascinating narratives. But he probably wouldn't last five minutes in a Comeprehensive School classroom, and even in an Academy students would probably switch off after ten. History teaching is a very different art from being a historian, and I would be more confident that Mr Gove was on the right lines if he said he was consulting history teachers, history inspectors, and history publishers. (And if we must have a TV personality as a figurehead I would in any case recommend the more down-to-earth Michael Wood.)
Mr Gove is wrong about the History Curriculum in a number of respects. The most important respect is his misunderstanding of the place of narrative. Narrative involves many things. It may be the teacher telling a story like the Battle of Hastings. It may be that a kind of 'Big Story' is revealed when a class follows a theme, such as the development of technology over a couple of centuries, during the course of a whole term's teaching.
It may be simply presenting a series of dates, like the dates of English Monarchs that used to be found on pencils, rulers, and the back of exercise books. However, one thing it cannot be is a set of facts about our history that we can all agree on. There are, at any rate outside Conservative Party Conferences, competing narratives of British History, and indeed of all History. Making sense of competing narratives - for example the story of kings and the story of peasants - is something that history teachers are pretty good at, and they do a very good job of preparing young people to make sense of an increasingly confusing world.
In fact 'knowing how the vivid episodes of our past became a connected narrative' i.e. why some historians manage to put forward particular theories of the past such as the importance of individuals, the influence of Geography or Economics, or ideas such as 'The British Empire was a good thing' are precisely the kind of very sophisticated arguments that young people are introduced to by the study of History.
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