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Anti Woke movement grows

clivem2 said:
As you say, it's all about context. Schools wouldn't have to teach every era in fine detail. They could teach an overview of "civilised??!!" history and then focus. Just taking one era could easily end up with the students believing it was the era with the worse abuses because they know no better, it then gets built into their psyche.

Whilst we on this topic, I want to add that judging the past by today's standards is fraught with dangers, again we don't usually employ the full context or understand the standards of the day. In the future, our time and ourselves will likely be totally pilloried for destroying the planet and bringing about the demise of mankind.
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Yes, I take your point, but first of all, what is ‘civilised’ history? Second, just teaching an overview of history would be problematic, do you try to give an overview of all civilisation? How do you give an overview of, for example, Chinese civilisation, Indian civilisation alongside Mayan, Inca, American Indian etc etc etc. How far back do you go? Recent Archaeology suggests that Neanderthals were civilised and as there was inter breeding, is the story of our prehistory important to an understanding of our present.

That is not to say that the teaching of history shouldn’t be all inclusive, but dumping it all on schools is not possible, there just isn’t the space in the curriculum.

On your second point I tend to agree, but with the inevitable but, which is that in the case of climate changed we should be pilloried past, present and future. The wrongs of the way we treat out planet are well known today, and were well known long ago, they’re just being ignored while short term profits are prioritised. It could be argued that we are where we are on the climate because voters vote for the politics of short term economic gain over more substantial claims of climate justice. We can’t look back and say we didn’t know, because we do. We are just making a choice

Same with slavery. The horrors of slavery and colonialism were known at the time. The story of Thomas Picton (originally posted by @paulfromcamden) is illustrative. Thomas Picton was governor Trinidad who liked to torture young girls. He developed new forms of torture that were horrific in the extreme. He was arrested and charged, and when his case became known, it caused outrage. Quite rightly. However, despite the severity of his crimes being known, the case against him was eventually dropped, his fees were paid by sympathetic slave owners, he was subsequently promoted by Wellington and given a gong by Prince Regent George.

So like climate change, the evils of slavery and colonialism were well known at the time. They were just ignored.
 
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Joe Hutch said:
Enid Blyton was being cancelled when my children were nippers. Then she was rehabilitated as an important writer/role model for young women, with caveats about her racism, classism and xenophobia.
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Gave Enid Blyton books to our kids, neither really took to them. I think generally they’re now so dated in concept that they’ve lost relevance. My daughter quite liked the Faraway Tree, but no other books by Blyton grabbed the attention. The fact she still is mentioned as an author strikes me as one of these anachronisms whereby a large percentage of our population wishes it was still 1953, when times were simple and you knew where you were…
 
ks.234 said:
Yes, I take your point, but first of all, what is ‘civilised’ history? Second, just teaching an overview of history would be problematic, do you try to give an overview of all civilisation? How do you give an overview of, for example, Chinese civilisation, Indian civilisation alongside Mayan, Inca, American Indian etc etc etc. How far back do you go? Recent Archaeology suggests that Neanderthals were civilised and as there was inter breeding, is the story of prehistory important?

That is not to say that the teaching of history shouldn’t be all inclusive, but dumping it all on schools is not possible, there just isn’t the space in the curriculum.
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I did some HE History modules with the OU years ago. The thing that really struck me at the time was there was very little kings/queens/battles/dates - the work was geared far more to teaching students to look critically at historical sources and placing them in context, asking who they were produced for, understanding the inherent bias and analysing how reliable a source they are.

Those seem like far more useful skills than teaching a single 'correct' (government sanctioned?) version of history.
 
It helps if you look on all those red areas of the Map of the World from school as representing indigenous bloodshed.
The Killing Times of Aboriginal peoples(https://www.theguardian.com/austral...-of-aboriginal-people-australia-must-confront), The Black War in Tasmania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War) The story of Truganini.( Midnight Oil wrote a song about her)......list goes on and on.
While all this was going on we also had The Opium Wars-basically British merchants had half of China hooked on Opium from India and 2 million Irish peasants starving to death during The Great Famine....

Lets not forget the more recent "Seeding of The Empire" shipping kids in care homes off to Oz to lives of cruelty and abuse....

The sad thing is I can't see sharing any of this altering the behaviour of one single racist.
It's value is in young kids being made aware of it and catching them before they fall for the Untermensch poison.
 
paulfromcamden said:
I did some HE History modules with the OU years ago. The thing that really struck me at the time was there was very little kings/queens/battles/dates - the work was geared far more to teaching students to look critically at historical sources and placing them in context, asking who they were produced for, understanding the inherent bias and analysing how reliable a source they are.

Those seem like far more useful skills than teaching a single 'correct' (government sanctioned?) version of history.
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Yes, my experience was much the same when I did an OU PGCE in History in the 90's. it was very much the Kings, Queens and Battles (that we won) that Gove was pushing for as I remember
 
lordsummit said:
Gave Enid Blyton books to our kids, neither really took to them. I think generally they’re now so dated in concept that they’ve lost relevance. My daughter quite liked the Faraway Tree, but no other books by Blyton grabbed the attention. The fact she still is mentioned as an author strikes me as one of these anachronisms whereby a large percentage of our population wishes it was still 1953, when times were simple and you knew where you were…
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Our two (born late 1980s) loved them. Famous Five, Secret Seven, Malory Towers, Five Find-Outers ... They could see the anachronisms even as children, but found the stories gripping.

I myself discovered Enid Blyton's books by chance; my mother bought a Famous Five book in a jumble sale and that was me hooked. We weren't a bookish family by any means, and there was no money around to buy many books, but I got through the local library's stock of Famous Five books like a dose of salts. Same as with the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge.
 
Joe Hutch said:
Our two (born late 1980s) loved them. Famous Five, Secret Seven, Malory Towers, Five Find-Outers ... They could see the anachronisms even as children, but found the stories gripping.

I myself discovered Enid Blyton's books by chance; my mother bought a Famous Five book in a jumble sale and that was me hooked. We weren't a bookish family by any means, and there was no money around to buy many books, but I got through the local library's stock of Famous Five books like a dose of salts. Same as with the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge.
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Sounds like much what I read, Jennings, Biggles, Hardy Boys, Famous Five, Swallows and Amazons. I then started reading James Herriot and Agatha Christie, then discovered science fiction. I was surprised when I glanced at them with my children in recentish years, just how old fashioned they were. I think the world has changed, and there’s very little to reflect their experiences. They both grew up with the wonderful Julia Donaldson and Michael Rosen (plus many others, I’ve never stinted on books), and from the beautiful prose and whimsy of those to Enid Blyton may have been a jump too far!
 
The headline is deliberately inflammatory and designed to draw attention away from the main issues of the day. In actual fact, the only reason for the story at all is that English Heritage wishes to have an advisory on their website against Enid's work. Linking it to Black Lives Matter or saying that Enid is being cancelled is pure clickbait but beneath that is to bury any focus on Boris's bad news.
 
Enid Blyton not part of my background or reading at all.

Only read the wiki section on her alleged racism and it does raise questions. I can remember golliwogs on the back of jam jars, so the allegation about Blyton’s characterisation of ‘Sambo’ could be innocent, however the very short description of the story line suggesting that a black face is repulsive and a white one is welcoming suggests something worrying.

What are the impressions of people who read Blyton as a child?
 
I suspect that racists probably don't cite the works of Enid Blyton to underline their views.
 
They do like to get golliwogs shared all over facebook though and they were often the naughty characters in her books
 
lordsummit said:
Sounds like much what I read, Jennings, Biggles, Hardy Boys, Famous Five, Swallows and Amazons. I then started reading James Herriot and Agatha Christie, then discovered science fiction. I was surprised when I glanced at them with my children in recentish years, just how old fashioned they were. I think the world has changed, and there’s very little to reflect their experiences. They both grew up with the wonderful Julia Donaldson and Michael Rosen (plus many others, I’ve never stinted on books), and from the beautiful prose and whimsy of those to Enid Blyton may have been a jump too far!
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Almost exactly my reading history as well with added Lewis Carroll, EE Nesbit, Pamela Brown, earlier and Dick Francis along with the Agatha years.
 
cutting42 said:
Almost exactly my reading history as well with added Lewis Carroll, EE Nesbit, Pamela Brown, earlier and Dick Francis along with the Agatha years.
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Yes! Dick Francis, never got on with Lewis Carroll, definitely EE Nesbitt, then Wilbur Smith, Hammond Innes and Alistair MacClean.
 
ks.234 said:
Enid Blyton not part of my background or reading at all.

Only read the wiki section on her alleged racism and it does raise questions. I can remember golliwogs on the back of jam jars, so the allegation about Blyton’s characterisation of ‘Sambo’ could be innocent, however the very short description of the story line suggesting that a black face is repulsive and a white one is welcoming suggests something worrying.

What are the impressions of people who read Blyton as a child?
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If you read the Daily Mail article quoted above, you'll see that it was not innocent, but definitely racist, especially so by 1966 standards. Excellent article, by the way, surprisingly.
 
PaulMB said:
If you read the Daily Mail article quoted above, you'll see that it was not innocent, but definitely racist, especially so by 1966 standards. Excellent article, by the way, surprisingly.
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It's a shame that the headline was so inflammatory when the story was so minor. It shows the battle ahead though when a company cannot even have a note on their website that is a statement of guidance about an author's work without the press creating hysteria about it.
 
lordsummit said:
Sounds like much what I read, Jennings, Biggles, Hardy Boys, Famous Five, Swallows and Amazons. I then started reading James Herriot and Agatha Christie, then discovered science fiction. I was surprised when I glanced at them with my children in recentish years, just how old fashioned they were. I think the world has changed, and there’s very little to reflect their experiences.
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That would imply that children can or should only read about things that 'reflect their experiences'. As a child, I read all sorts of stuff from all sorts of eras (going right back to books about Greek and Norse mythology) and didn't mind that it didn't reflect my experiences, any more than Jennings' experiences as a pupil at a prep boarding school reflected mine as a pupil at a bog-standard primary school. Reading should, IMO, be partly about going beyond the local and familiar. (Of course, if children don't enjoy reading particular authors, there's no way of forcing them to).

This is a debate that goes right back to the very beginnings of children's literature in the 18th century; should reading be closely related to children's own lives, or should it seek to test the limits of their imaginations? Should it always seek to impart a moral (that good conquers evil, for example), or should it seek primarily to amuse and entertain?
 
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