Hi Tom.
That is pretty dire, and indeed while I know British attitudes haven't
always been the best, at least in terms of education there was a reasonable
enough spectrum, with various courses that teachers could choose on
different periods, however much of the point of history was thinking
historically.
Indeed, the course that I did for gcse's betwene 13 and 15 was history of
medicine, which obviously instead of taking one specific historical period
was a general look at the way over time peopl had considdered deseases and
injuries, going from the ancient egyptians onwards to the modern day,
covering various religious and scientific views as well as advances such as
Pasteure, koch, and flemming.
Though concentrating primarily on europe from the grieks onwards, it was a
general look at the way people thought, rather than a look at the specific
history of a given nation, and to me, far more interesting because of that,
indeed during my degree I took two extra modules specifically! on history of
medicine so that I could look at the subject in greater detail.
When i was doing my A levels, things were a little more tied to one period,
being the renaesance quite specifically, however this covered Britain and
the hole! of europe, not just Britain itself, which again gave a far more
detailed picture of what was happening, ---- for instance not just that
Francis drake sunk the armada, but the reasons why the spanish wanted to
invade britain in the first place (and in fairness given what the royal navy
had been doing to Spanish merchant shipping I can't really blame them).
I'll also add that this is something I really like about Doctor who, that
even in it's initial conception, part of the idea was that it would be an
educational program (two of the first doctors' original companions were his
grand daughters' history and science teachers).
You thus got episodes set in the Aztec empire, china at the time of marco
polo, or france during the huganot massacre. unfortunately, this aspect
rather fell out of favour in later episodes and usually instead of
historical settings being used to show something about the history, they
were just backdrops to a science fiction plot (though there were still
occasional exceptions where the setting got more notice), ---- and the new
series hasn't exactly helped (especially with it's ultra short episodes).
The doctor who audio dramas from big finish are fantastic for fully
exploring historical settings, often with absolutely no sf elements at all
just like the original 1960's version, and we've had stories set everywhere
from the Arabic empire in the 9th century, to ancient egypt, the first world
war, RRussia at the time of napoleon etc, indeed one of my favourite recent
stories was set in British colonial india in the late 19th century and
themed somewhat around the works of rudyard Kipling.
Unfortunately, with the national corriculum over here getting over all
easier I'm not sure how much this trend continues, indeed recent surveys by
news papers are suggesting that a lot of kids don't even know about basic
hhistorical figures like Oliver Cromwell, ---- and still worse when it comes
to literature, a survey I remember carried out by a British paper said that
%70 of kids had not heard of Rudyard kipling, and a good few just associated
the name with the Kipling brand of cakes which is really! dire.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
---
Gamers mailing list __ [email protected]
If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected].
You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at
http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org.
All messages are archived and can be searched and read at
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected].
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list,
please send E-mail to [email protected].
