What History was taught in your schools?

Where’s the assumptions, I’m telling you how it is. Maybe you’d like to argue with my grandmother who had British soldiers (convict militia called black and tans) enter our house and threaten to shoot it up. Do you know the Queen has never been to Ireland, this year will be her first visit.
The above description is just Ireland though…let’s not get started on India or South Africa.

Highlighted for you, below.

[quote]
[color=#FF0000]That would make you normal then[/color], since some of my British colleagues still seem to think Ireland is part of the UK.[color=#FF0000] The English are always perplexed why the funny Irish don’t support their football team in the World Cup. [/color]Well even the Welsh and Scottish aren’t too keen on that.
We were taught Irish history from pre-historic to present day, including Viking, Normans, Anglo-Irish, penal times [color=#FF0000](look it up British!)[/color], famine period, Catholic emancipation, fair bit of British history, French and European history especially Louis IV, Voltaire etc, a lot about WWI and some about WWII (which Ireland did not directly participate in [color=#FF0000]due to neutral stance[/color] and relatively recent independence, it was called ‘The Emergency’ ) next to nothing regarding Asia, Africa, Middle East or the Americas. WWI in Ireland was a hidden part of our history until recently as Ireland had the Easter rising during that time. The centre of Dublin was destroyed and did much to persuade people to agitate for full independence,. [color=#FF0000]Most British don’t even know Ireland had a war of independence in 1921 (they also don’t know anything about penal law and little about Cromwell, who is infamous in Ireland), I think they assume they just gave us our country back peacefully (or the above, somehow still part of UK) , [/color]well you could talk to my grandmother about that one![/quote]

Why would the queen have been to Ireland? Has she been to every nation in the world? Would that signify anything to Irish people? What?

:bow:

I still don’t get it , are you telling me the average Brit knows the history of Ireland…I sincerely doubt it. I often meet educated English and they just assume we are still part of the UK or Great Britain. I will correct them sometimes but usually I just leave it, it’s not a big deal to me if it’s just ignorance of history.
Not saying this in a bad way as most people have hazy ideas of history anyway and it’s not common for the unattractive parts to make it into the school books.

Why do you doubt it? It shows more about your prejudices than reality. Digs like this one are also noted:

Not sure whether the main thrust of your argument was that Brits are all stupid and uninformed, or that Brits are inherently evil because of our colonialism.

We learned about WWII thought the movies of the day. As AJ said, it wasn’t really history in those days. It was current events only ending 16 years before I was born. That’s the amount of time I’ve lived in Taiwan. I feel like I learned a lot about it though through film, books, and returned servicemen league clubs. It felt like ancient history though, but obviously it wasn’t. Sandman and I had this conversation just the other day.

I learned in my History courses that France helped Irish, Scottish and Americans against those damn Brits :popcorn:

Well, I’m sure you also learned the difference between ‘Brits’ and ‘English’, and how Scotland became ‘British’, and also that the French factions (I’d hesitate to say ‘France’) were fairly unsuccessful, and that their aim was generally the Anglo-French throne, not ‘friendship’ with Scotland or Ireland. :roflmao:

Dunno about America, we didn’t really study much after 1600.

Well, I’m sure you also learned the difference between ‘Brits’ and ‘English’, and how Scotland became ‘British’, and also that the French factions (I’d hesitate to say ‘France’) were fairly unsuccessful, and that their aim was generally the Anglo-French throne, not ‘friendship’ with Scotland or Ireland. :roflmao:

Dunno about America, we didn’t really study much after 1600.[/quote]

Of course France didn’t do this by friendship, just wanted to annoy England just like England annoyed France with other things. Quid pro quo :stuck_out_tongue:

England and France shared the throne for 100s of years. The French - English - pan European royals and papal interests simply raised armies of mercenaries against whichever interests threatened their own. The concepts of separate unified nations is a modern one. It was quite normal for factions within what are now known as England, France, Spain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, etc, to ally with foreign factions to gain the upper hand in partisan struggles. All ended the same; farmboys getting slaughtered.

Anti-English-ness is boring. There isn’t a single person on the British isles who is solely ‘English’ (Danish / Swedish). We are a Scandinavian-French-Italian-q Celtic-p Celtic, and more recently Pakistani-Caribbean-Chinese hybrid bastard ‘race’. You furriners can hate us if you like. Just please stay out of Oxford town centre on a Saturday afternoon? I’ve got errands to run, and you attract buskers.

mhm, didn’t know that, sounds cool.

Just chilling :wink:
Yep, anti-english-ness is boring, just like anti-french-ness, but both are not very serious anymore. Europeans are facing now much more important problems (like economical crisis or over-immigration).

mhm, didn’t know that, sounds cool.
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Sorry, I know I’m a bit of a nerd about it, but 14th and 15th century Anglo-French history is fascinating to me. It actually goes back to the Norman invasion of Britain in that most of the rulers of England also held vast territories in northern France also, so believed themselves to be rulers of both northern France and England. Later on, the Tudors (Welsh) and Stuarts (Scots) had legitimate claims to both due to ancestry and marriage, as well as other territories in Europe. The ‘English’ lost the throne of England in 1066. Strange times!

[quote=“flike”][quote=“Bu Lai En”]I find it shocking that anyone anywhere would not learn about the world wars.[/quote] Me too. Note that MT never claimed WWI/II were never taught. Instead his claim is that he has no memory of such a teaching.

Ahem. I for one suspect that MT suffers from stoner memory. . . [/quote]

Could be. I now recall something about an Archduke Ferdinand, though I no more recall the details of that than I do concerning the Teapot Dome Scandal or the Louisiana Purchase, other terms that now bubble to the surface. Sounds like most school kids are taught mostly about the history closest to them geographically, not surprisingly, which may be why I feel slighted in my education of WWI and WWII history. I do recall learning about our Revolutionary and Civil wars.

I think it was sandman who mentioned Scandanavian history (in Scotland). Odd. Nothing against Scandanavia – it’s a beautiful region – but I wouldn’t have expected their history to be taught to school kids (not uni history majors) outside the region any more than New Zealand history or Taiwan history would be.

Anglo-Saxons and Vikings are Scandinavians. You’re writing Scandinavian! Norway held Scottish territory til the 1700s(?).

mhm, didn’t know that, sounds cool.
[/quote]

Sorry, I know I’m a bit of a nerd about it, but 14th and 15th century Anglo-French history is fascinating to me. It actually goes back to the Norman invasion of Britain in that most of the rulers of England also held vast territories in northern France also, so believed themselves to be rulers of both northern France and England. Later on, the Tudors (Welsh) and Stuarts (Scots) had legitimate claims to both due to ancestry and marriage, as well as other territories in Europe. The ‘English’ lost the throne of England in 1066. Strange times![/quote]

Yes, since that famous battle of Hastings.
Strange times indeed, and the English language itself went through profound transformations, for instance, my high-school English teacher (who is american) used to tell us (I guess you know this story) that from that middle age time English people used ‘‘beef’’ (in French ‘‘Boeuf’’) to signify a dead ‘‘ox’’, ‘‘mutton’’ (in French ‘‘Mouton’’) to signify a dead sheep, and ‘‘pork’’ (in French ‘‘porc’’) to signify a dead pig, because the Norman masters who spoke old French obviously used these words when they were served food. Fascinating :thumbsup:

Ok, now that you mention it, I remember hearing of Lief Ericson and Eric the Red in 4th grade.

Yup, it’s true. Many Norman French words became ‘prestige’ words, as the Normans were the rulers, and English the conquered. English was the peasants’ language for a couple of hundred years, until the inevitable assimilation made itself known, and poets such as Laȝamon and later Chaucer started to write non-religious texts in English.

Meat was for the rich, and so these foods had French names. ‘Turnip’ and ‘cheese’ and ‘bread’ are Anglo-Saxon, though!

Even now, ‘vulgar’ words in English are Saxon, not Norman in origin, when they were not originally vulgarities. Fuck, arse and cunt (from ‘conige’ - knowledgable, the root of the mod Eng word ‘cunning’) are Anglo-Saxon words. We tend to use Latin or latinate words to be polite ‘fornicate’, ‘intercourse’ ‘posterior’, ‘bottom’, ‘vagina’, ‘vulva’, and so on, when we are being polite.

wow, this logic went very far.
Good to know these things. thanks!

That’s interesting. Uagina (vagina) was itself a crude word in Latin, meaning, literally “sheath” - the place where one put one’s sword. In German, the equivalent word is scheide, which has the same literal meaning, but is closer to the word “cunt” in practical usage.

It’s also one reason modern legal language is so complicated. They repeated everything using both Anglo-Saxon and Norman French wording, and also followed Norman grammar patterns that still complicate legal language today.

And someone thought that that was just lawyers being pompous! Wow. Amazing. Will such wonders never cease and desist? For it would be a pity were any such let and hindrance interfere with one’s enjoyment of the multifarious and varied forms and modes of writing and other such instances of communication.