Post A2T4qKujz2aPyJtfCy by DoctorDee@spinster.xyz
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(DIR) Post #A2Sue6TopCHmBjpgCO by Nora@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T16:53:37.041939Z
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I read Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States in a sitting last night (since I’ve fucked up my sleeping pattern). I’d meant to read it for years but… years is how long it generally takes me to get round to reading things.I don’t know, by the way, if it’s now considered outdated or revisionist or problematic etc. etc.But I’m kind of impressed that such an honest reckoning with the past made its way onto school syllabi across the US (if I understand correctly?) and am struggling to imagine anything similar being possible in the UK, even before our 21stC swing to the right.I didn’t really do secondary school, so I could be wrong. But I don’t think the UK school system has ever had anything similar… or has it?
(DIR) Post #A2SvuPVRx9LXmiw2Hg by beccabei@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T17:01:25.806670Z
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@Nora Oh brilliant, I’ve had that in my pile for a long time but still not read it. I mentioned it on twitter one time and I got a long explanation for why it’s not great from this really nice woman - I think PanhandleBound - but of course I don’t remember anything because without having read the thing itself the critique just sort of faded away.Scottish system was just The War, suffragettes, railways? I think that’s most of what I remember from early high school (I didn’t take it beyond standard grade/GCSE). Nothing that grapples with colonialism from my memory.
(DIR) Post #A2SvuRpNK2TOz6GycS by Nora@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T17:07:45.506312Z
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@beccabei Yep I’m fully open to explanations of what’s wrong with it from the better-informed than me (most people, when it comes to US history!) I sort of expect that when a book’s old enough, there will be a consensus that there are problems with it.I guess war, suffragettes, railways can all be taught in ways that reckon with colonialism, but I just wouldn’t expect it in this country. I suppose our thing has always been to try and pretend things aren’t our problem/our history because they happened “over there.”It could be that things are different in UK schools nowadays, but I sort of doubt it. I wonder if we have any secondary school teachers here…
(DIR) Post #A2T2r7hUOi1hN5wiUi by Asplenium@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T18:05:04.378815Z
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@beccabei @Nora I think it really varies depending on which exam board your school used, and which modules your class picks? I did history to GCSE just over a decade ago, and we definitely covered the UK’s role in the slave trade, plus the Opium wars with China. (Obviously as well as WW1 & 2, suffragettes, industrial revolution etc etc)
(DIR) Post #A2T2shQB4ePORmbH7I by Notgonnastop@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T17:11:58.470206Z
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@Nora Zinn isn’t really taught in the USA K-12 curriculum in most places, and isn’t taught in many colleges and universities outside of labor studies (fewer exist every year) and political science departments. When each of my nephews graduated from college I gave them a copy of People’s History and neither of them had encountered it it college - one was a finance major and the other an engineering major. They did both read it and enjoy it, so that’s something I suppose. I also used it alot in adult labor education courses and workshops in my work career, and participants always found it very accessible and useful.
(DIR) Post #A2T39QmMCdJjkrx89w by Nora@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T18:28:54.986934Z
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@Notgonnastop ahh okay, I got the wrong end of the stick - I'd thought it was taught in secondary schools. It's slightly less surprising for college level.
(DIR) Post #A2T4E2LuY08XOpLKKG by LostInCalifornia@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T18:40:56.801005Z
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@Nora Read it years ago. It’s good. I have some issues with it, but only because I’m a geek. What it does is shake the myths, and we could all use more of that.
(DIR) Post #A2T4ZX9FFF3AzYfX9M by DoctorDee@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T18:30:22.978533Z
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@Nora As far as I know, People’s History is still ‘valid’ (though obviously as subject to criticism as any work of historical scholarship). I was a bit surprised that you wrote that it’s being taught in schools, but just looked it up and it does look like there was/is some kind of programme to get it into classrooms—but I doubt it’s taught in too many places, or has too much of an effect. (I have run across lots of students, though, who’ve told me they encountered it outside of/after leaving school and it had a big effect on their understanding of history.)From what little I know about how history is taught in UK secondary schools (having never taken it or taught it, but having had lots and lots of conversations with people who have), unlike in the US where teaching is a shocking free-for-all (there is no mandatory teaching of anything in any school in the US) teachers here have to stick pretty closely to the national curriculum, which is very rah rah England. I actually personally am in favour of the concept of a national curriculum (the only thing I’d say was positive in the Thatcher years, as far as I can tell) but I guess it shouldn’t be a big surprise that the contents and tone of the curriculum are designed to promote the interests of those who get to decide what it is.
(DIR) Post #A2T4ZXgvE1zMg0QQds by LostInCalifornia@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T18:44:49.464052Z
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@DoctorDee @Nora There’s no mandatory teaching, but there are college prerequisites. College bound high schoolers have to take those classes. Not sure how it works in other states, but high school in California is built around getting into UC or learning a trade.
(DIR) Post #A2T4dnJJ5zxmHDPIUC by Nora@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T18:45:36.502109Z
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@DoctorDee yep, I'd got totally the wrong end of the stick about it being taught in schools - I think that was my garbled memory of reading that it was taught in some colleges.I agree that a national curriculum is generally a good idea, but yes, it depends on the ideology of the state. I remember it being relatively ideologically inoffensive /neutral, not overtly patriotic, in my day. But I'd imagine things might have changed now - we're *far* more right wing than we were in the 90s. And of course there's all the gender stuff...
(DIR) Post #A2T4qKujz2aPyJtfCy by DoctorDee@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T18:46:52.796926Z
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@LostInCalifornia @Nora That’s a good point—secondary schools can do whatever the hell they want, but if they (or the parents sending their kids to them) have any expectation that their students will be admitted to uni they’d be wise to follow the uni’s guidelines (I used to be involved in creating these for students coming to me). Alternatively, if their secondary schools isn’t terribly cooperative or interested it’s possible for high school students to attend certain college classes and/or ‘test out’ of first-year university subjects based on a national test.
(DIR) Post #A2T4uJgmTrBPKYGVF2 by DoctorDee@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T18:36:32.900504Z
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@beccabei @Nora At least you got suffragettes and railways!! 🚂
(DIR) Post #A2T4uK0dI33wK7YMBU by Nora@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T18:48:35.684434Z
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@DoctorDee @beccabei I just remember lots of plague, tudors, glorious revolution and industrial one. But then I dropped off at about age 12. Junior school history was more interesting - ancient India, Egypt, Greece etc.
(DIR) Post #A2T53Dr9XHT5qZMa2q by Nora@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T18:50:11.667090Z
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@LostInCalifornia exactly, even if there are inaccuracies, it's a springboard for thinking critically about popular narratives, and that's often want I want in a history.
(DIR) Post #A2T5w0Bo3BphO391ii by LostInCalifornia@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T19:00:06.217921Z
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@DoctorDee @Nora Yeah, they used to offer advanced classes at the local community college when I was in HS. (I got out just before Prop 13 devastated the tax base, and California schools are not as highly rated anymore).UC isn’t bending on their requirements though. Home schoolers are not allowed to substitute “creationist science” courses, for example.
(DIR) Post #A2T6DwHxIBTyV8Zdgm by DoctorDee@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T19:02:13.690983Z
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@LostInCalifornia @Nora I was in school when Prop 13 passed, so I missed most of the effects personally. I did my last couple years of math at community college while in HS before heading on to UC, and I took something like 6? 8? AP tests my junior and senior years so tested out of pretty much all my first year of uni.
(DIR) Post #A2T6ul4Gt15i9XahSy by LostInCalifornia@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T19:11:05.144212Z
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@DoctorDee @Nora Oh lord, I forget my first year of college and what the tests were. (Last year living with my constant chaos family). I know I was able to skip English, but had to take a lit class, so I did, and I regret it.I really wish I’d done more English and lit.
(DIR) Post #A2T8UDDkJ4ijYaUa4e by DoctorDee@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T19:11:58.223386Z
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@LostInCalifornia @Nora You still can….
(DIR) Post #A2T8V9yXrEcNmWpm4W by LostInCalifornia@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T19:28:52.077442Z
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@DoctorDee @Nora (I do).
(DIR) Post #A2TGfy8F20mDrt2CeW by senryu@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T20:56:06.429373Z
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@Nora You might want to follow that up with Chris Harman’s A People’s History of the World. Harman was inspired by Zinn and wanted to expand the hypothesis about the flow of social and economic vitality. Very readable as well.
(DIR) Post #A2TGgz7ipWnLEWHB5c by Nora@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T21:00:38.755638Z
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@senryu thank you, I'll look it up.
(DIR) Post #A2TGiRNRGmqL9KK05A by DoctorDee@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T18:50:08.784587Z
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@Nora @beccabei My first-year history students were coming to me with one or more of the following in their last four years: Tudors, American Civil War, Russian Revolution, and Nazis. I had one poor young man who’d actually had Nazis four years in a row. I was just saying to someone the other night, on reflection, that it was amazing they had any interest in history at all after that.
(DIR) Post #A2TGiRcgM72JubSAqG by grace_hawthorn@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T18:57:03.445314Z
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@DoctorDee @Nora @beccabei we had an amazing ‘O’ level teacher (pre-GSCEs for the young ones here) who picked a curriculum called “World Affairs Since 1919” - so there was WWII, but also the Cold War, the proxy wars in Africa and elsewhere, the rise of China, independence of colonies, and also, which i thank him for hugely, British history in Ireland. I’m so grateful to him for all this … there were gaps, obvs, but he was the most dynamic and engaged teacher and spent the whole time drawing links between what he was teaching us and our present lives (this was mid-80s, so Cold War still very much present).
(DIR) Post #A2TGiRvTEG46qsFB7w by DoctorDee@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T19:12:29.311413Z
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@grace_hawthorn @Nora @beccabei Teachers like this improve the lives of so many people, often without even realising it…but they’re in far too short supply.
(DIR) Post #A2TGiS6SZOr7OxNxFw by grace_hawthorn@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T19:14:50.260033Z
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@DoctorDee @Nora @beccabei i was living and working in Gdansk in the late 80s & early 90s and I wrote to that teacher to thank him for what he’d taught me because it helped me make sense of what was happening around me. It was lovely actually - he wrote back and said how much he’d appreciated hearing it.
(DIR) Post #A2TGiSOBVV2AHvg6sq by DoctorDee@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T19:18:15.044196Z
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@grace_hawthorn @Nora @beccabei I taught architecture for five years, in my own particular contrarian way, and my students used to occasionally come visit, after they’d left, to unload to me about how awful their other architecture professors were, bless them :blobjoy: some of their stories were pretty hilarious.
(DIR) Post #A2TH5qEP1om2tUFlwm by DoctorDee@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T18:48:03.961219Z
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@Nora No, you were actually correct:‘In 2008, the Zinn Education Project was launched to promote and support the use of A People’s History of the United States (and other materials) for teaching in middle and high school classrooms across the U.S. The goal of the project is to give American students Zinn’s version of U.S. history.[20] With funds from an anonymous donor who had been a student of Zinn’s, the project began by distributing 4,000 packets to teachers in all states and territories. The project now offers teaching guides and bibliographies that can be freely downloaded.’No idea how much this actually took hold, but there were people with money attempting to make it happen.
(DIR) Post #A2TH5qU05pFbfrYEG8 by Nora@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T21:05:07.686922Z
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@DoctorDee maybe it's partly because we didn't have something like an equivalent book, with the same level of readability and popularity, that it feels so implausible here. Or maybe not.
(DIR) Post #A2THOdhlpDUJXvxAxs by Nora@spinster.xyz
2020-12-22T21:08:31.525947Z
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@grace_hawthorn @DoctorDee @beccabei he sounds brilliant. My one brilliant teacher was my English lit teacher, who got me excited about Chaucer, middle English, metaphysical poets. I'd love to have had a brilliant history teacher too- I might have learned something slightly more useful!