| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Are our State schools allowed to teach history? | |
| Posted by: | Paul Green | |
| Date/Time: | 26/06/20 11:41:00 |
| I read an interesting blog on this by Pippa Catterall, history professor from Westminster univeristy. One key point is very relevant and seems to lie at the heart of some of the issues and specifically concerns raised: 'statues represent what people in the past chose to celebrate and memorialise, they do not represent history.' So removing a statue of a slave trader does not change history in the least. I suspect 90% of the population know more about slave trading and this country's role now than 3 months ago. So actually the act and coverage have taught history... So statues were not meant to teach history, rather: 'statues in public spaces since Antiquity have most typically been used to represent power and authority' This is surely blindingly obvioius. Less than 3% of statues in UK are of non-royal women. So why is that, the answer is to think who had the power and money when most of these were erected. Were women absent in our country for last 300 years..? Also our landscape can and does change, we moved statues in many of the countries we occupied. The Victorians and later removed old statues. Landscapes evolve... We need to careful of comparing changes now to the fall of the Iron curtain or misinterpreting quotes from 1984. My point in this thread is simple: huge aspects of British history are ignored and not taught or even referenced. Lets address that, actually teach history, acknowledge the good and bad (many commentators on Empire still seem to take a very relaxed view of it as a civilising exercise). |