Travis
Established Member
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/britainpeoplehistoryoffbeat
Maybe they just asked the wrong 3000 people.
Travis
Maybe they just asked the wrong 3000 people.
Travis
What are they teaching in history classes?
- Thread starter Travis
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BradNaylor
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Teaching of history in English schools is almost as bad as the teaching of geography in American ones!
:lol:
:lol:
White House Workshop
Established Member
Just take a look at who they asked. Say no more....Travis":1wr29tco said:Maybe they just asked the wrong 3000 people.
Travis
Travis
Established Member
I cannot agree more.
Its truly sad that the younger generation don't know what our forefathers went thru to have the life style we have today.
I am not picking on English history.
I am sure that if the survey had been taken in the US, the results would have been just as dismal.
Travis
Smudger
Established Member
Hold on. If I wasn't off I'd be teaching history at this minute. To give you an idea what I am teaching this week:
Year 7 (11 years) - the Battle of Hastings, looking at sources, deciding on reliability
Year 8 (12) - the English Civil War, specifically the part played by Oliver Cromwell
Year 9 (13) - Stalin's Russia, the dictatorships of the 30s.
Year 10-11 (14-15) - Britain in WW2, Hitler's Germany.
What else do you want me to do?
The problems are:
1) You can't teach everything - people have to do some of the work themselves, and
2) People forget, and
3) Some people don't understand it however simple you make it.
Now, if you go and ask 100 stupid people about anything you'll get a dumb response, no? And then there's the way the questions are asked.
Also - I don't teach King Arthur - it isn't on the UK syllabus - so where people get that from I don't know. Bernard Cornwall? Old movies? How am I to blame for that? Or for any other stupid thing that some numpty believes?
Harrumph.
Year 7 (11 years) - the Battle of Hastings, looking at sources, deciding on reliability
Year 8 (12) - the English Civil War, specifically the part played by Oliver Cromwell
Year 9 (13) - Stalin's Russia, the dictatorships of the 30s.
Year 10-11 (14-15) - Britain in WW2, Hitler's Germany.
What else do you want me to do?
The problems are:
1) You can't teach everything - people have to do some of the work themselves, and
2) People forget, and
3) Some people don't understand it however simple you make it.
Now, if you go and ask 100 stupid people about anything you'll get a dumb response, no? And then there's the way the questions are asked.
Also - I don't teach King Arthur - it isn't on the UK syllabus - so where people get that from I don't know. Bernard Cornwall? Old movies? How am I to blame for that? Or for any other stupid thing that some numpty believes?
Harrumph.
Terry Smart
Chestnut Products
Whoa Smudger! I think I understand how you feel!
Perhaps a better title for this thread would be something like 'How thick are some people despite the best attempts of the education system?' Reading stuff like this must be very frustrating for you but it does have some results; I remember taking my girls to Hever Castle one time and their knowledge of Henry VIII put me to shame, and I can have good discussions with them about such topics as WWII and the causes of it, and they're 14, 15 and 17. (We do do fun things together too I hasten to add!)
Sadly, you can't teach people who don't want to learn.
Perhaps a better title for this thread would be something like 'How thick are some people despite the best attempts of the education system?' Reading stuff like this must be very frustrating for you but it does have some results; I remember taking my girls to Hever Castle one time and their knowledge of Henry VIII put me to shame, and I can have good discussions with them about such topics as WWII and the causes of it, and they're 14, 15 and 17. (We do do fun things together too I hasten to add!)
Sadly, you can't teach people who don't want to learn.
Smudger
Established Member
You are right.
I was in the pub a while back, being made to listen to some guy telling me that his nephew's school had totally failed to teach the kid to read. I was getting crosser and crosser when a friend simply said 'perhaps they tried really hard and it wasn't their fault'. I could have hugged him.
The moaner, by the way, is known as "Fireman F***wit"
I was in the pub a while back, being made to listen to some guy telling me that his nephew's school had totally failed to teach the kid to read. I was getting crosser and crosser when a friend simply said 'perhaps they tried really hard and it wasn't their fault'. I could have hugged him.
The moaner, by the way, is known as "Fireman F***wit"
Woody Alan
Established Member
Perhaps if someone had spent some time with the kid reading books and playing games with him, instead of plonking him in front of teletubbies he might have been able to read before he went to school. It really naffs me off when people think the responsibility for everyting lies with someone else and never them.
Personally I have been quite impressed with "most" of the teachers at my daughters school, their accessibility and ability to still teach some children despite the disruptive element.
Alan
Smudger
Established Member
That is what has changed in the past 20 years. The number of kids who just don't know, or care, how to behave around other people, who think that schools are just an extension of their social lives. Parents who say they don't want 'boundaries' for their kids...
It only takes 2 in a class to prevent the majority from learning. And every kid we exclude costs us thousands of pounds (the authority fines us, effectively, for excluding them) which we can't afford.
But, that said, when it all goes well teaching is the best job in the world (except maybe for that guy who had to polish Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman costume, with her in it...) - almost as good as it says in the ads.
It only takes 2 in a class to prevent the majority from learning. And every kid we exclude costs us thousands of pounds (the authority fines us, effectively, for excluding them) which we can't afford.
But, that said, when it all goes well teaching is the best job in the world (except maybe for that guy who had to polish Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman costume, with her in it...) - almost as good as it says in the ads.
Some years ago my daughter came home from school bearing the info that of course, England didn't engage in the slave trade.
A quick note to her teacher about the history of Bristol and Liverpool, the Tate Gallery etc elicited the response of, 'Oh!'
If the teacher knows nowt, then the kids will know nowt.
I personally love the response on TV quiz shows by 40+ contestants that we didn't cover that at school.
Some people are so ill informed I suspect that they must have worked at it.
Roy.
A quick note to her teacher about the history of Bristol and Liverpool, the Tate Gallery etc elicited the response of, 'Oh!'
If the teacher knows nowt, then the kids will know nowt.
I personally love the response on TV quiz shows by 40+ contestants that we didn't cover that at school.
Some people are so ill informed I suspect that they must have worked at it.
Roy.
Smudger
Established Member
There are lots of primary teachers 'teaching' history who haven't a clue. We will be covering the slave trade in Year 8, showing how profits from the trade led to investments which sparked off the Industrial Revolution, and so later developments. I see it as an important part of the foundations of British nationhood that we understand, accept and get over that fact. And don't forget we now have to teach 'citizenship'.
You should ask the teacher why, in that case, the old coat of arms of the city of Liverpool was supported by two black men in chains...
You should ask the teacher why, in that case, the old coat of arms of the city of Liverpool was supported by two black men in chains...
Smudger/ Roy,
Ikeep telling my 2 boys this nation has nothing to be ashamed, after all this is how we have evolved, the difference is we are big enough to admit it was'nt a good idea and that it won't happen again, at the end of the day this great country ended up with democracy, surely the most valuable thing we embrace, I appreciate that a few despotic kings had to lose their heads, but that's progress,
I would like to think that the sooner the African nations follow our example the sooner this world will be at peace with itself, what it demands is the common man standing up and saying "enough is enough"
I'm not advocating anarchy,but the only way for them to move on is to get rid of the arsxxxxxs who take all the handouts from the UN and put it in Switzerland ready for when they are deposed.
Another thing that gives me great concern is the national curriculem,
this is not aimed at you Smudger, but the N.C. I went through gave me the ability to read, write, count, do basic woodworking/metalworking/ technical drawing, but above all, the ability to carry on teaching myself when I left school and I'm still doing it now.
With the present N.C. I don't think the kids are being well prepared because everyone can't be good at I.T. and anyhow you will always need people who are good with their hands, Tony Blair has ruined this country and the prospects of most of the youngsters by advocating I.T. as the be-all and end-all of learning, what really worries me is that these kids will be running this country in the next 20 years, I apologise for sounding so negative but that's how I see the situation as it currently stands.
Rich.
Ikeep telling my 2 boys this nation has nothing to be ashamed, after all this is how we have evolved, the difference is we are big enough to admit it was'nt a good idea and that it won't happen again, at the end of the day this great country ended up with democracy, surely the most valuable thing we embrace, I appreciate that a few despotic kings had to lose their heads, but that's progress,
I would like to think that the sooner the African nations follow our example the sooner this world will be at peace with itself, what it demands is the common man standing up and saying "enough is enough"
I'm not advocating anarchy,but the only way for them to move on is to get rid of the arsxxxxxs who take all the handouts from the UN and put it in Switzerland ready for when they are deposed.
Another thing that gives me great concern is the national curriculem,
this is not aimed at you Smudger, but the N.C. I went through gave me the ability to read, write, count, do basic woodworking/metalworking/ technical drawing, but above all, the ability to carry on teaching myself when I left school and I'm still doing it now.
With the present N.C. I don't think the kids are being well prepared because everyone can't be good at I.T. and anyhow you will always need people who are good with their hands, Tony Blair has ruined this country and the prospects of most of the youngsters by advocating I.T. as the be-all and end-all of learning, what really worries me is that these kids will be running this country in the next 20 years, I apologise for sounding so negative but that's how I see the situation as it currently stands.
Rich.
Smudger
Established Member
Rich - I agree with you 100%. My generation of teachers is dead, retired or retiring, and a lot (not all) of the youngsters coming through are quite inadequate in knowledge themselves, and are trained in this idiotic 'competencies' model. I go for trying to understand rather than just 'learn'.
White House Workshop
Established Member
I'm quitting the IT industry after 40 years - it has become SO boring. Every question anyone is asking today has already been answered, at least twice, but the new kids on the block don't like the old answers so they have to reinvent the wheel, again and again and again... The only benefit of modern technology over that of a couple of decades ago is that today you find out who the idiots are even faster!
What I find really interesting is that in over 60 years of government interference and multitudes of N.C.'s the average reading ability of an 11 year old is no better than it was in 1950, and could in fact be worse. Politicians aren't teachers, and most of them couldn't be if their life depended on it. Let the teachers teach.
What I find really interesting is that in over 60 years of government interference and multitudes of N.C.'s the average reading ability of an 11 year old is no better than it was in 1950, and could in fact be worse. Politicians aren't teachers, and most of them couldn't be if their life depended on it. Let the teachers teach.
Smudger
Established Member
There is an unpublished (not surprising) report that the increased government intervention in Science teaching in the early 2000s caused a sharp decline in achievement. Teachers were told to stop what they were doing and do it the government advisers' way. Things went bad.
Result? More advice and prescription. A few signs that it is changing, but what you say is so true.
Result? More advice and prescription. A few signs that it is changing, but what you say is so true.
