How is the American War for Independance taught in the UK?

[funguy2121]

I know how the War for Independence is taught in Aus. Will Smith killed the aliens and the Americans became independent. The End.

You forgot to mention Randy Quaid desperately trying to hang on to relevance as he flies a fucking jet fighter in slow motion into the mothership, and Jeff Goldblum figuring out how to translate a virus from Windows 95 into the current alien OS in 5 minutes. Or that the astronaut is dating a stripper.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

I took California History and, when I moved to Arizona, Arizona History.

Most of both of those were learning about the conquistadores, Hispanic culture, and the impact of the Catholic Church on colonial progress. And every time I moved to another area, the new school would re-teach it.

I must have learned about Coronado SIX TIMES.

One would think you would have been able to 'test' out of those classes and take something else... or have a break period.

Well, there really was never a chance to test out of such things in schools in my area. Except for selecting to take World History as one of my social electives in high school, everything else was U.S. History, from elementary to high school. And it always was a crammed history section. Every year we would start with Columbus(even though he never really set foot it what would be the US) and we would always end up at the Great Depression and WW2, any US history after that like the Korean War, Kennedy, etc etc, barely got a day for each topic.

Now my state's history(Indiana), I never encountered it until my US history class in college.

 

[Calbeck]

tbh i don't even remember doing the break up of India at high school but then i am Scottish so we had 1000s of years of our own local history to cover as well.

and you can stuff you're "nice try" "simplistic and avoidance" stuff.

Hey, you wanna trot out the straw men and similar sidestepping and get called on it, deal with it.

*puts on sunglasses*

But seriously, not even a paragraph for Ghandi. That's criminally poor edumacatin'.

 

[funguy2121]

...or that we invaded japan back when we still used wooden boats...

Yeah, seems I missed that lesson as well. Did a bing search and the only invasion/planned invasion of Japan that I could come up with was during WW2. When did we invade Japan?

*cough*commodoreperry*cough*

What does this have to do with a credit union?

 

[Febel]

World History

Australian soldiers went to a bunch of wars, got betrayed by their British superiors, and went on to show that they were the best soldiers in the world even if they did misbehave at times. They also taught the rest of the world to swear properly.

And this is why Americans love Australians. -

Nah, 's tha accent mate, make's 'em instant-ly luvable even when they're taking th' piss tahkin 'bout prawns and what is and is not a knife.

 

[Calbeck]

well even i know you get taught about the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights because it relates to your Constitution

Yes, it is relevant to our interests. -

 

[funguy2121]

...or that we invaded japan back when we still used wooden boats...

Yeah, seems I missed that lesson as well. Did a bing search and the only invasion/planned invasion of Japan that I could come up with was during WW2. When did we invade Japan?

Supposedly we didn't full scale make war but it was an armed invasion, we set troops on the ground, we made a beach head, and that was supposed to be first contact USA made with Japan.
1853-54: American force to open up Japan from isolationism. We used force to break the shell that was keeping them safe from foreign affairs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opening_of_Japan

We made asses of ourselves because a nation wanted nothing to do with us.

Now, as an American, I can say that that is typical American arrogance.

 

[tofulove]

You're 5 pages late to the party bro. Read the whole thread.

ugh, you quoted my double quoted fail post that i accidentally posted before fixing. and to be honest did not read the hole thread, just most of the first page got to that and i was like, whos crack pipe you bin smoking.

 

[redspud]

look at this way:

you have 230 odd years of history so over the (i assume) 4-5 years of high school you stretch it out.

we have 1000s to fit into the same period of teaching and we usually start with the stone/bronze age

Speaking from my experience we were taught pre-colonial american history as well as our own. We also covered some English history like the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights,and Henry VIII. We also go over the the other colonies that were in North America. Also a little bit of the French Revolution.

well even i know you get taught about the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights because it relates to your Constitution

My point was that we are not only taught our history but all the stuff that related to it as well. The Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta were just easy to name.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

The text book itself(for Texas) was VERY lacking for the national history portion. The sections for each area were extremely small and given we only had 250 years an 1 1/2 thick text book would seem good. Except it was plastered with pictures and the print was something out of a child's pop up book.

Will clean up my previous point to avoid further confusion.

But as far as i am concerned Texas text books for history suck and go into little depth on most subjects.

Well, that is because they spend a whole YEAR teaching the 12 years Texas was an independent country. Fuck that class, Texas History. It was long, boring, and stupid. No one in my class CARED that Texas was an independent country. Does Massachusetts have a "Massachusetts History" class dealing entirely with the history of being a separate colony until they signed the Articles of Confederation? Not that I know of... But Texas has to be fucking special, and not in a "You win a prize" way, either...

Yup. That was the only year I didn't enjoy history. Well, that and the year I had a teacher who claimed that the Quartering Act had nothing to do the British government forcing colonists to allow soldiers to stay in their homes.

The stars at night, are big and bright...

Hey now my Texas History class was cool. We did battle scene reenactments and war strategy. We also got to make models of the Alamo and cool hats like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone.

 

[LostAlone]

You're 5 pages late to the party bro. Read the whole thread.

ugh, you quoted my double quoted fail post that i accidentally posted before fixing. and to be honest did not read the hole thread, just most of the first page got to that and i was like, whos crack pipe you bin smoking.

As has been pointed out by a couple of people now, much of what I've been saying has been obtuse and argumentative for the sake of it, and I apologies for that *shame*.

 

[funguy2121]

a cotton-pickin' racist (edit: nuh-uh!)

The irony of that is just too much, I had to say something... I just have to know, do you seriously know what the term "Cotton-picking" refers to, or were you just using it because it is a common slander for southerners?

The irony was intentional, man. I didn't realize that cotton-picking was used to insult the southerners in general; I thought it was just used to refer to blacks. I used it 'cos I've always thought it was funny when people would say cotton-picking in lieu of "motherfucking" as though it's somehow less offensive.

 

[Calbeck]

As has been pointed out by a couple of people now, much of what I've been saying has been obtuse and argumentative for the sake of it, and I apologies for that *shame*.

Don't apologize, it's been fun. -:3

Seriously, it's like fish in a barrel anymore: someone says something about the US, various Euros feel impelled to leap in and talk about how much a bunch of arrogant bastards Americans are and how they really were never particularly important in the greater scheme of things.

And, as with most people on the Internet, they're half-right. -

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

So do they teach the American Revolution in the Uk as an English civil war with the English fighting the English or not?

 

[Febel]

So do they teach the American Revolution in the Uk as an English civil war with the English fighting the English or not?

Nah they were fighting colonists. Those filthy, filthy colonists...wait, I'm one of them.

 

[LostAlone]

As has been pointed out by a couple of people now, much of what I've been saying has been obtuse and argumentative for the sake of it, and I apologies for that *shame*.

Don't apologize, it's been fun. -:3

Seriously, it's like fish in a barrel anymore: someone says something about the US, various Euros feel impelled to leap in and talk about how much a bunch of arrogant bastards Americans are and how they really were never particularly important in the greater scheme of things.

And, as with most people on the Internet, they're half-right. -

Hehe its always fun. And yeah, as with any internting, everyone's always at least partially wrong.

Whats really interesting to me is seeing the difference in educational approaches. Like I said earlier, I am a major fan of the US, but I do wonder a lot about how you educate your kids. It often seems that outside of the world wars, it seems to be very introspective, which is very alien to Europeans.

 

[Reaper195]

I live in NZ, and it was somewhat covered, but not that much. About the same as every other revolution, independance grabbing, war, etc from hundreds of years ago.

Japan's textbooks have a large, gaping hole in the WWII area, most notably toward the end.

I see....so the hole is more...hole-y? Hehehe, sorry. I couldn't help myself.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

...or that we invaded japan back when we still used wooden boats...

Yeah, seems I missed that lesson as well. Did a bing search and the only invasion/planned invasion of Japan that I could come up with was during WW2. When did we invade Japan?

*cough*commodoreperry*cough*

The Australian rough overview:

Perry: Hey, Japan, we want to trade with you!
Japan: Fuck off, big nose!
Perry: What was that? I couldn't hear you over the sound of my cannon blowing the shit out of your fortified harbour.
Japan: How the fuck did you do that?
Perry: Trade and we'll teach you a bit of it.
Emperor Meiji: Modernise this shit right up. NOW!
Japan: On it.

 

[Loiterer]

Aha, see this is where you're wrong. We covered all of world history as well as American history, which is why I find it odd that the UK would leave out an important event such as the American Revolution. Perhaps it's a time issue? How many years of history did you take? We take three (as a minimum), one of which is dedicated to world history, one to U.S. History, and one to government/economics (not necessarily U.S. policy although sometimes it is).

As for WWI, it's interesting that you should say it's taught as a triumphant victory, because it isn't. It's actually taught just as pointless and depressing as the way it most likely is for you. It's just that the average idiot has this information go in one ear and out the other and instead hears from other sources about our "glorious" victory. And then everyone gets the impression that we were taught that this was so.

We take a minimum of three, but most people do five. I personally did it up to A level, so I took History for seven years. And most of it's taken up by British history, with a shift towards America and the USSR for modern history. I guess we just have a lot more to cover on the domestic front than you. And the American Revolution is only really an important event for America. America would rise to prominence later, sure, but our curriculum doesn't include the founding of any other powerful country, why would we learn about the USA's?

And it was an American poster a page or two before me who mentioned that the first world war is taught like a glorious victory, I was just commenting on that.