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Author Topic: "medieval" education in school
Ulfgar
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Member # 225

posted 08-24-2005 07:36 AM     Profile for Ulfgar     Send New Private Message   Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote
Ok, here is my rant for today. I am getting really peeved with the load of lukewarm bullcookies bieng taught to school children whenever medieval history comes up. It seems whenever we do a school demo we have to wade through this morass of misconceptions and victorian era fantasy. I finally had a look at the actual school text to see where it was all coming from and have learned some interesting "facts".....
Fact one- you can easily recognise a viking from his horned helmet. Vikings apparently spent all of their time raiding other countries and did not do anything else.....
Fact two- it was called the dark ages because absolutely nothing happened then. Period. no progress in any area!
Fact three-all of the peasants/serfs/villiens were down trodden all of the time, no exceptions...
Fact four- peasants ate turnips only....
Fact five- style and fashion in everything was pretty much the same from when the romans left to about the beginning of the industrial revolution...
There was a lot more in this vein but I just couldn't take any more. It really worries me that movies like braveheart and Troy are bieng used as educational material, but compared to what they get in school this might be an improvement.

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Yes, these are bruises from fighting.That's right, I'm enlightened!


Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
gregory23b
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Member # 642

posted 08-24-2005 08:50 AM     Profile for gregory23b   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message   Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote
Hooray for Hollywood and populist bubble gum history bending.

Not the sole culprits by any means, but certainly the major contenders at present.

Add to that semi-educated teachers, ie ones with a broad and shallow depth of knowledge across a very wide field who read the same old crappy 'history' books we used to read before we got really interested.

In another place a similar thread is running, but about films rather than poor history in general.

I sometimes feel that those of us with the varying levels of interests are the guardians of a lost lore, slowy over time our numbers will dwindle, but one day someone somewhere will dig all this stuff up and it might mean something.

But I will have you know I have a tradition of wearing plastic Viking horned helmets at significant fucntions, my stag party, my Bro' in Law's and another, great fun as we used the plastic horns to drink beer from - so it isn't all bad.

Mm, hungry, I shall see if my mud soup is ready......

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history is in the hands of the marketing department - beware!


Registered: Aug 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fire Stryker
Admin & Advocatus Diaboli
Member # 2

posted 08-24-2005 09:00 AM     Profile for Fire Stryker   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message   Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote
Don't get me started on what's wrong with the educational system...I was about to go on a political correctness rant , but I stopped myself just in the knick of time.

From your description, it doesn't sound like much has changed since I went to secondary school. Sounds like they need a new crop of history teachers.

I can remember the dark ages and how Medievals were a bunch of war mongering savages that wallowed around in their own feces and didn't have a brain in their head. Little more than better dressed neanderthals that still liked slapping puddles with sticks for entertainment. And did you know that it wasn't until the 16th century that everything turned around? That's 16th century England. Europe no longer existed until Louis and Marie Antoinette lost their heads and Nappy took over the world.

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ad finem fidelis


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Thomas james hayman
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posted 08-24-2005 09:03 AM     Profile for Thomas james hayman   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message   Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote
I was lucky enough to have a history teacher that was truly interested in history. He knew what we were emant to be learning about but helped dispell a lot of myths. Ironically he is how i use to picture history teachers, tall, plaid shirt and with a full face of hair.

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The allotment spot
http://tomsallotment.blogspot.com/


Registered: Aug 2004  |  IP: Logged
Martin
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Member # 603

posted 08-24-2005 05:20 PM     Profile for Martin     Send New Private Message   Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote
Well sometimes I guess it is hard to get the right kind of information. Thinking of two magazines that normaly have very interesting topics and seem to be a bit more serious than your normal yellow press, but what they brought out about medieval history, made me turn slightly green in the face. Starting with the cover of one where there is a picture of a well known actress wearing a plastic breastplate over a knitted and silver sprayed so called chainmail shirt, and the whole thing was supposed to give an impression of how a knight looked like, no period of time mentioned, and then going on to all those well known klishees on medieval midgets, rotten food, viking helmets with horns and you name it. People who have no knowledge of this topic but take the other topics of these magazines seriously will believe every word printed there, and then lots of fun trying to convince them that what they read might not be quiet right.........publishers can be cruel!

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Verpa es, qui istuc leges. Non es fidenter scripto!


Registered: May 2004  |  IP: Logged
Diana Peterson
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Member # 749

posted 08-26-2005 03:19 PM     Profile for Diana Peterson   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message   Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote
I'm sure everyone's had more than one encounter of the kind I had last week at our faire.

Here I was, sitting in the scribe shop in nice middle-class fashions, surrounded by countless tools of the trade and examples on the wall of complicated images, various scripts, gold leaf, etc., working on a little gilding.

A group of young adults asked me a few questions, looked around, but didn't stay long. On the way out, the 'educated' one of the bunch was loudly explaining to them about how the Renaissance was when "people started thinking again" and the "dark ages" was when art, philosophy, religion, and politics simply stopped developing.

I wish they'd remained in my shop, as I'd have been able to set them straight without dropping character pretty easily.

The amount of sheer, illogical ignorance is staggering. I do my very small part to fight that when I can, but I really wish school textbooks could be filtered a little better and the classes wouldn't get taught by the local football coach.

---Diana---


Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Ulfgar
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Member # 225

posted 09-01-2005 04:15 AM     Profile for Ulfgar     Send New Private Message   Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote
I am doing a talk for the local school history class on the "medieval era" ( I always thought there were several eras within this period actually...) this tuesday. Usually the bulk of such a talk is devoted to dispelling myths. I will post the results on list afterwards.

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Yes, these are bruises from fighting.That's right, I'm enlightened!


Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged

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