"Inappropriate" history

Sadly, I don't think Mo has had any real education in American history at this point, other than the Oregon Trail.

Mo isn't a big fan of reading fiction so we get some history just by reading about people and places and events.

We have looked at the Constitution! Some kid at school insisted that he HAD to believe in God so I dragged out the Constitution to show him that he had a right to believe what he wanted to believe -- and so did the other kid -- and that they both had the right to say it out loud.

I remember overhearing a lovely conversation between Mo and my brother about such things wherein my brother explained that his job as a soldier was to protect people's right to say things -- even things he personally disagreed with.

This is a great comment, especially coming from you, Set.

We've talked before about how history is made boring in school and I think this emphasis on dates is part of the reason. So much of it is "when did this happen" not "why did this happen".

I dunno; there might have been more controversy about Hiroshima, if we did it BEFORE Pearl Harbor.





David

yes of course, the context of events increases understanding of events, the actual dates, not so much.

A sentiment worth repeating . . .

Well, it might have been considered "Inappropriate" history, if we 'd done it the other way.





David

As it happens, it was only a war crime.

Reading back on this interesting thread, I think maybe it's your definition of history that may be setting you up for your unhappy attitude re the 'changes' categorized as multicultural inclusion to the history curriculum.

You say history is achievement. This would seem to limit history class to a long list of white guy's names and what they did/made. However, if you look at history as the longest narrative about what happened and why, you can see why it is mandatory to include what groups were doing at different junctures in time. These facts drove history.

What is our meaning of the French Revolution without a deeper understanding of Bastille Day? What do you get from Bastille Day without a horde of pissed chicks? Why were they pissed? Whose achievement tells us about this time in French history? How did this effect American history? Would a picture of the signers of the Declaration of Independence be as informative as the connection between the pissed in France and the pissed in America? Of course, I'm not quizzing you. Just trying to show you (yeah, with tongue in cheek a bit) how beautifully we all interact through time to bring about these big moments signified in old textbooks by the achievements of white guys.

The relatively recent 'change' in the history curriculum to include multiculturalism doesn't denote a change in history, obviously. It denotes the previous, wrongheaded exclusion of most of the people who lived it.

Anyway. Enjoying the dialogue.

My kid teaches history at a CC - and he's a guy who considers students successful when they learn - NOT when the war happened - but why. You don't have to look at what's being billed as 'multicultural history' as the liberal establishment's homage to political correctness; but instead, a wider reaching analysis of society - all of us in our factional or concerted progress - where each group started, what they did, what life was like for them - and how it affected the whole.

The question is then - do we want to know more? In education, that answer should always be yes.

Awesome, Monterey! It was being lived - but no one wanted to shine a light on it.

Of far more interest to people who want to know about the history of women in regard to the French revolution would be the day of the market women. I'd have to check for the exact date, but it was in October, 1789, that the market women began spontaneously to march to Versailles from Paris. Along the way, they rounded up women they encountered on the street. Some men, trying to be agents provocateurs, pulled dresses over their heads, but the market women ignored them.

Upon reaching Versailles, they demanded to see the Queen (she was much despised in France). One member of the Garde Française at the gates attemped to stop them entering the grounds, and they dragged him down and killed him. They eventually broke into the palace itself, and Marie Antoinette and her women had to flee with the children just ahead of the mob.

The Marquis de Lafayette, who was at that time the commander of the National Guard (and much despised by Marie Antoinette, who considered him a "class traitor"), backed up in his plea by the mayor of Paris, Jean-Sylvain Bailly, arrived the next morning and convinced the King and Queen to return with him to Paris. The heraldic colors of Paris are red and blue, and that of the French monarchy, white, and enterprising women quickly ran up some red, white and blue banners--which is the origin of the modern French flag.

The removal of the royal family to the Tuileries Palace in Paris was the beginning of the end for the royal family. The day of the market women was a far more important event in the history of the revolution than was the storm of the Bastille. Christopher Hibbert is one of my favorite contemporary historians and biographers, and i highly recommend his The Days of the French Revolution. In French, there are two words for day--jour and journée. The latter is the significant word in this case, as it means the sum of the events of a day (and is the origin of our word journey). Hibbert describes all the significant "days" of the revolution in the book. I enjoyed it immensely.

Thanks for the correction and the Hibbert suggestion.

By the way Lash, a similar thing happened in Russia in 1917. There were two revolutions, first the Russian Revolution in March, then the Bolshevik Revolution in November. In March, the women working in the munitions factories in Petrograd (St. Petersburg--they changed the name during that war) decided to march to the center of the city to protest the price of bread. The leaders of the Bolshevik cells in the factories told them not to, because their leadership had told them to keep their heads down--and the women ignored them (stupid men).

They marched down the Nevsky Prospekt, the "main drag" in the city, along the Neva River (the river runs through the center of the city and the city is built on islands in the estuary, so that there are lots of "canals"). It should have been an ideal situation for crowd control, but when the Cossacks blocked the advance of the factory women, the women stopped and asked them things like "You wouldn't shoot me, would you, Little Mother?" (a term of endearment for men or women). Then they began to stoop under the horses or to push past them, and the Cossacks did nothing. The "Pharaohs," the imperial mounted police, then started using whips on the crowd, and the Cossacks then opened fire on the police. The Pharaohs knew at that point that they were screwed, so they got out of Dodge.

Bolshevik cell leaders from the factories rushed to the Alexander III Square--the nickel had finally dropped for them. Troops who had refused to leave their barracks when ordered out to stop the march, now rushed to the Nevsky Prospekt to support the crowd. A machine gun battalion was ordered out, and they duly marched to the city center, and then set up a ring of machine gun positions to protect the crowd should any more police or Cossacks be sent in.

Sailors from the fleet and soldiers from the now rebelling regiments then formed a committee or council, called a soviet. The Soldiers and Sailors Soviet was the first government of revolutionary Petrograd. And just that morning, the Bolshevik cell leaders in the factories had told the women to be quiet and go to work.

This I applaud, though I think it is rare. I think that what happens most of the time is that history is rewritten according to modern values, in which case it is impossible to talk about why things happened because the values of the time are ignored except to make that claim that our ancestors were defective. We can not talk intelligently about why things happened back then after we decide that we don't need to use the moral and philosophical road map of the time, after we overlay OUR map upon our ancestors and then proceed to make pronouncements about why things happened as they did.

Fascinating! I was unaware of this. Seems like women needing bread can be an explosive situation. Thanks. I'm adding it to my lesson planning ideas for Animal Farm. Even if all I have time for is a sentence in the historical backgrounding, I hope I get an opportunity to share it. Very appreciative.

The concept is ridiculous.

Is cancer "inappropriate" medical science?

Teachers should be able to relate difficult subjects in a way that informs but does not scar children. If they can't they should be terminated.