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

[oktalist]

With a lot of you guys from across the Pond I am very curious as to how the UK treats this part in your history.

It was sort of a big deal. To actually go against a major power and win wasn't really all that common of an occurance.

Would it be a major subject? I would assume not like Vietnam isn't mentioned that much in American.

Well, considering it was one of the first, if not the first, revolution that led to the end of European imperialism

Wiki has these: lists of wars involving England [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_England] and Great Britain [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Great_Britain].

Of those ~150 wars, I remember only these being taught: Norman Conquest (1066-88), English Civil War (1642-51), World War I (1914-18), World War II (1939-45), Falklands War (1982). World War I was only briefly covered, and I might be misremembering being taught about the Falklands. Yeah, our history curriculum is shit. It's a bit inconvenient for a government to have to teach its children (who grow up to be voters) just how much of a warmonger it is.

I don't even remember being taught about the wars with Scotland or Ireland. It was all stuff about what kinds of pottery the Romans made, medieval settlements, ancient Egyptian heiroglyphs and memorising stuff about the bloody royal family. And I remember it all being simply about the facts of what happened, not their effects or historical implications. I didn't continue with it after age 14 when we start to choose to specialise in certain subjects rather than others. I chose geography instead because I thought rocks would be more interesting.

I don't remember being taught anything about any colonies, except just being told they existed. There was a lot about the slave trade, though. We can claim to have been the ones to have abolished it, so that makes it easier to teach.

EDIT: Sorry for bumping old thread. Search results should really be sorted by date by default, then it wouldn't have happened.

 

[Jacco]

Typical American arrogance to assume it's taught at all.

Umm...not really. It was sort of a big deal. To actually go against a major power and win wasn't really all that common of an occurance. It also seems like it's be something of an important thing to learn about considering that a lot of people consider it to be the turning point in colonialization and whatnot. Not to mention the fact that we fought the British again not a whole hell of a lot later in the War of 1812. It's a legitimate question.

And not only that, but it kicked off the "Age of Revolution" which is to say the French Revolution and it's many, many contemporaries. That's a fairly significant time in Western History.

 

[GonvilleBromhead]

I (a Briton) was taught at school, however it was whilst I was very young - as such the myriad complexities involved could not really be explored, and simplification was thus something of a necessity - attempting to explain the complex intellectual upheavel in the late 18th century that lead to the rise of early forms of nationalism, the huge gulf between modern cultural norms and those of the period, etc to 10 year olds would be an exercise in futility. I daresay that there is much simplification in the American education for similar reasons - even topics I covered when older I now know to have been heavily simplified (and, in the case of the topic of WWI - something I now have a strong interest in - more or less completely wrong and out of sink with modern historical thinking!).

One also has to factor in the Britain has a pretty long history (over two thousand years to cover), whereas the written history of North America is closer to five hundred years, and of the US about 250 years. Most thing's in British history can only be touched on.

 

[zombie711]

Typical American arrogance to assume it's taught at all.

Whoa thats your first post. Keep it up and the Mods will do this to you.


So again please stop troll'n

 

[zombie711]

I would assume not like Vietnam isn't mentioned that much in American. Plain and simple, losses aren't elaborated on.

Well actually we do. Probably because Theres not enough History during that Time to focus on, Also it was the first war to use helicopters, as well as the first war to be shown on TV, and created the Hippie generation, as well as hundreds of movies. Its really hard to ignor. It weird though that we lightly touch on other wars like the korean war, and how we kinda helped panama Rebel against Colombia

 

[Philol]

At school it wasn't covered, but then again not much American history was really taught. However at Uni I'm studying history, and for the second semester (current one) we had to choose between American and Greek history, I choose American and we have gone through the American revolutionary war.

 

[A Raging Emo]

It isn't, but I was curious and asked my History Teacher about it; I always found that if you were curious or interested in something not covered in lessons, if you asked your Teacher about it they were often more than happy to help.

 

[Katnap_Devikat]

Not taught in australia, i wish it was because then we wouldn't have been taught about australian independence EVERY BLOODY YEAR in highschool.

 

[FamoFunk]

We didn't. To be honest, we have a big enough history of our own to learn about in school first.

 

[Hoplon]

We didn't. To be honest, we have a big enough history of our own to learn about in school first.

If that was the case why was my history GCSE on medicine and the Arab-Israeli conflict?

It's not taught at all, the entire empire period is glossed over entirely in schools so they don't have to talk about inconvenient things like the east India company.

 

[FamoFunk]

We didn't. To be honest, we have a big enough history of our own to learn about in school first.

If that was the case why was my history GCSE on medicine and the Arab-Israeli conflict?

It's not taught at all, the entire empire period is glossed over entirely in schools so they don't have to talk about inconvenient things like the east India company.

Not sure, I didn't do GCSE History. Maybe it covers world history not just British?

Just in general we're more likely to learn about what we did in the war and such (Been a long time since I did history and what else we did) over what American's did.

 

[The Bum]

I think it's the Japanese lack of interest in the history of WW2 that's sorta creepy. The only war crime the poms committed was wearing red and walking in a straight line. BTW the red coats were because some paragon of the British officer class thought it'd stop the men freaking out over the wounded, as you'd hardly notice the bleeding and screaming over the loudness of their jackets

I thought red dye was just a lot cheaper?

I love the way his upper class logic completely jumped over the fact that they would be easier to shoot at...

That didn't matter, muskets were so inaccurate that hitting a single target beyond 50 yards was pretty much impossible. Not to mention the fact that everyone wore colorful uniforms, because it was easier to tell who was who in the heat of battle.