Mike Tribe

Dalibor, I obviously can't speak for John, but I think I know why I supported anti-nuclear demonstrations in the 1970s... It's really difficult, 30+ years on, to underdstand the "spirit of the age" back then. That's one of the things that makes the task of the historian so hard. You have to remember that this was the time of the 1968 "student movement" which swept much of Western Europe, and of the anti-Vietnam War movement in the US. Many of us back then really thought we were on the cusp of a totally new "third way" which rejected both the rapacious neo-imperialist capitalism of the West and the State Capitalism of the East. Thus, we threw ourselves into campaigns against the Bomb, against Apartheid, and, yes, against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia -- I remember attending a meeting in Manchester at which the Stalinist Old Communist head of the local engineering union agreed that his members would support the march we were organizing against the invasion and then went on to make a 30-minute speech explaining to us the ideological differences between the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the invasion of Hungary in 1956. We sat down in the streets and were dragged off by policemen who demonstrated varying degrees of tolerance. We sang Bob Dylan or Joan Baez protest songs, we called ourselves Anarcho-syndicalists or Libertarian Socialists. We called for the "radical realignment of the Left" which would abandon both the totalitarianism of the Communist Party and the trade union conservatism of the Labour Party. Of course, after a few years, it all came to nothing... We discovered that the times were not a'changing and that the old order was stubbornly refusing to fade away... The idealism of the 1970s transformed itself into the Thatcherite realism of the 80s and 90s. Student radicals became respectable lawyers, accountants and businessmen. Many of those who didn't abandon their dreams and illusions drifted into education, which is why you meet quite a few of them on forums like this where they either became cynical -- like me -- or continued to hope for real change -- like John, I suspect. Do I think I was naive back in the 1970s to think anything I did could make a real difference? With the benefit of hindsight and through glasses which now tend to tint everything with cynicism, I would say that I was. But I'm rather glad that I was, that I and my generation did try to look beyond material self-interest and hedonism. For all that we failed, were, perhaps, doomed to fail, it was worth trying, and who knows, one day... I do think you're wrong, though, to say that we were unconcerned about the sufferings of the people of Eastern Europe. Your political analysis somehow seems to equate opposition to nuclear armaments with support for the Soviet Union. Now, it is true that a small minority of the anti-nuclear movement was avowedly pro-Soviet and saw State Capitalism as a panacea, but the vast majority were highly critical of Soviet repression, either from a Trotsky-ite (or similar) perspective or from a more JS Mill-liberal stance. Again, I don't think it's necessary to read through all of John's output on various websites or in his numerous publications to see where he's coming from politically, and I think you misjudge him seriously in stating that his idealism is somehow a sell-out to Communist repression...

I was also a member of CND all those years ago. In answer to Dalibor, I also helped organize street demonstrations in Manchester against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. With the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to criticize the anti-nuclear demonstrators of the 60s and 70s. Certainly, a lot of us were naive. We did tend to swallow Soviet propaganda a little too uncritically -- or, to avoid speaking for others, at least I and the people I associated with did. We labeled everyone who disagreed with us as "warmongers" whether they were or not. Looking back on it, we were really a bit supercilious in dismissing the sincerely held worries about Soviet intentions held by supporters of the nuclear deterrent. I agree with John that, in the end, the immorality of weapons of mass destruction must be the deciding factor, but I certainly don't think the material that's emerged from Soviet archives since 1989 provides much support for our contention back then that all that was needed to ensure world peace was to love our enemies!

It does seem to me that the forum is beginning to be somewhat swamped by the JFK thing. While this may be very interesting to some, it isn't really something I can use in the courses I teach, and some of it does seem rather weird, to say the least. It used to be that JFK stuff comprised about half the posts on any given day. Now it seems like it's more than 90%... I have to admit that I now spend less time on the forum than I did since I often log on to find nothing at all except conspiracy theories... Yes, it's partly my fault for not posting more myself, but, in the real world, things like marking, lesson plans and bl**dy committee meetings tend to limit the time practising teachers have for thinking out and writing original posts... I don't want to sound negative -- the forum is still very useful -- but I do think something should be done to ensure that JFK enthusiasts and the rest of us can all be kept happy. happy New Year to everyone...

Oh, yes, John. I like it... It will now be incorporated into the IB classes!!!

One of my late mother's favorite sayings was "If the dog hadn't stop to take a sh*t, it might have caught the rabbit." I like to use it -- appropriately modified -- with IB students who speculate on such things as what "might" have happened is Hitler had not been frightened by his Jewish nanny, or some such silliness...

If anyone wants to post a biography and needs it translated from Spanish into English (and it's fairly short!), PM it to me and I'll send you back a good enough translation to use...

Someone mentioned in a post last week that some people were unhappy about posting biographies and so on in English because they were worried about their ability to express their views effectively in a foreign language... I think this is a pity... I don't have a lot of free time, but I'd be happy to translate short-ish contributions from Spanish into English if anyone has something they'd like to contribute... PM me if you need help...

But John, doesn't it really depend on what the state's intervening in... Your list: is a bit selective. One could also add child labour legislation, mines safety, public health, etc, etc. On the other hand, I wouldn't be quite so happy about the state telling me which books I should read, whom I should marry, the clothes I should wear, the political parties I should be able to join, etc, etc. I think it's a pretty fundamental division between two different views of the left, one of which is fundamentally of the sort of "directive" mentality which believes that the "vanguard of the people", having achieved a greater level of "class consciousness" is obliged to intervene in the lives of the less enlightened. The other view is more in line with the JS Mill liberal view which suggests that protection of individual liberties should lie at the heart of government. I'm sure both "wings" would accept the sort of intervention you cited, John, but isn't Margaret Hodge suggesting we need to go a bit further than that? On a purely tactical level, I think you would agree that examples of "nanny statism" like banning conker fights or tree climbing or, indeed, Christmas trees only serves to provide the right with a stick with which to beat progressives...

I don't think it's really worth getting into a long argument about this, and I feel very uncomfortable defending Charles. but I do think John may be putting words into his mouth. Is it not possible that his comments had nothing to do with the social or educational background of the lady in question but rather on her capacity for hard work and her natural ability, which is what he, apparently, actually wrote... Since, it appears, she also stole the memo from someone else's desk, and accused an openly homosexual member of staff of sexual harrassment, then perhaps he had grounds for suspecting she may not have a bright future in the Royal Household... I'm not a royalist, and am quite happy for members of the Royal Family to be attacked harshly and frequently, but I honestly don't think this case warrents it...

I hate to say it, but isn't it true that some hard work and ability is quite useful in the achievement of success? I know Charles is a very easy target, and that he often talks rubbish about matters about which he knows little or nothing, but I do sometimes feel that we've gone a little too far down the road towards bolstering children's "self-image" at all costs. A few years ago, the results of the international project measuring children's mathematics ability showed American children scoring almost at the bottom of the "league table" in all mathematical skills except one: self-image. In other words, they had very poor skills, but felt good about their ability... Of course, this does have the advantage that kids feel good in their mathematics classes, but do we really do them a service by convincing them that they have achieved skills they haven't?

When I was working in Iran after the islamic Revolution, all the international schools were obliged to employ an official from the Revolutionary Committee charged with ensuring that islamic correctness was observed at all times. One day, the SMT was summoned to his office and informed that we had failed to follow the Revolutionary Committee's edict regarding the separation of the sexes. Yes we have, we replied. Boys and girls sit in separate classes, eat lunch at different times, use different staircases and have different playtimes. Not the three-year-olds! he announced triumphantly. But they're too young, we protested... They don't understand about any of that. We have conclusive proof, he said, that co-education in European and American schools is a direct cause of homosexuality. We segregated the three-year-olds. I know this wasn't relevant, but I couldn't resist...

North eastern colonies: mostly protestant dissenters; Massachussets -- puritans; Rhode Island -- different dissenters who fell out with those in Mass; Pennsylvania -- Quakers Middle colonies: varied: New York -- captured from Dutch (set up as profit-making enterprise); Delaware -- originally Swedish; Maryland -- Catholic refugees from England. Southern colonies: varied: Georgia & Carolinas -- large number of convicts and bonded servants; Virginia -- originally set up as profit-making enterprise. If you do a google search, you'll come up with millions of hits from different US schoold districts where they do a lot of this sort of thing...

A couple of months ago, I mentioned the Gilder-Lehrman Institute seminars in reply to a post on the Civil Rights Movement in the USA. The Gilder-Lehrman Institute is a US charitable trust which is supposed to encourage the teaching of US history. They have a fairly good website and a lot of historical documents covering all periods of US history, but the best thing they do, I think, is the annual selection of summer seminars for teachers. I went to one on the Cold War a couple of years ago at Magdalene College, Cambridge. It was led by Odd Arne Westad, one of the top historians in the field, and was really useful. The Institute pays all food and accomodation costs and even mails you the books for the seminar. And they pay you a course stipend of $500 for attending... I don't know what the other seminars are like, but if they're anything like as good as the one I went on, they're an outstanding educational opportunity... http://www.gilderlehrman.org/teachers/seminars1.html

As I've said before, I'm pretty much in the Stone Age in this area, but I made myself a New Year's resolution to really get into it this year. This is part of what's happened so far: I'd seen some of Richard's stuff on his website, like the great videos on the French Revolution, and I thought, how difficult can that be? The kids check the video camera out of the library, film their stuff, download it on to the computer, and edit it. I checked with the library. Yes, we had four brand new digital video cameras ready to go. No problem! I checked with the IT Dept. Great idea! No problem... Any idiot could do it... So, we spent some class periods working on story boards and shooting scripts, and then we checked out a video camera and started shooting. Great! they're right, any idiot could do this! The first problem arose when the first tried to download what they'd shot. It just wouldn't go in. We spent a fruitless period going from computer to computer in the lab trying to make anything happen. It transpired I'd foolishly failed to check whether the camera I'd checked out had a firewire connection (bad) or a USB connection (good). Anyway, the project continued. The kids even got together after school and at home during the weekends and HOURS of film was shot by the various groups. That's when things REALLY began to go wrong... Groups were coming back into school enthusiastically trying to download their stuff on to the computers. Once again, nothing worked... One group stayed behind after school for five hours working with one of the IT team failing to download anything. I got an irate email several pages long from one of the parents. It eventually transpired that my school's computers only accept material shot in NTSC and the kids had used their own PAL cameras to shoot some of the stuff. They had to play it back through a multisystem VCR then re-record it in NTSC then download it, a process which took HOURS, before they could even begin to edit. By this time, I was willing to thrown in the towell and go back to chipping tools from flint... In the end, we got some quite nice material, but it took hours and hours longer than I had anticipated and reduced me, the kids, and quite a few parents to nervous wrecks. What was the point of this anecdote? How does it relate to Richard's post? Well, I strongly suspect that quite a lot of history teachers are just as incompetent as I am. Of course I'd heard of firewire, but I didn't realize how critical the difference was. I knew there were two different video standards, but it didn't occur to me that you couldn't edit them not matter what system they were in... I think that's one of the things we should be working on -- a series of handbooks for non-expert teachers which will lead them through the jungle by the hand and help them avoid what I've just been through. I can see a need for "handbooks" on creating simple websites, on using forums, on digital video, on PowerPoint, and on using interactive whiteboards. Experiences like mine might put off a teacher who was just thinking of wetting his toes in the IT waters... Mind you, I did learn from the experience and the Paris Peace Conference video came out quite well...

I'm sorry you were annoyed by my comments about exaggeration and lack of historical perspective, John, but I really do believe that your comparison with Mussolini and 1930s European fascism is going too far... I abhor GWB's domestic agenda and look upon his foreign policy as, at best, misguided. I do not think, however, that this heralds the eventual triumph of some sort of Christian-Fascist totalitarianism, or of a right-wing military coup. There are some purely mechanical/constitutional reasons for this. As you know, constitutional changes in the USA -- such as a federal ban on same-sex marriages -- require a 2/3rds majority vote in both houses of Congress and then the assent of 3/4ths of the state legislatures within a set time limit. That's why the ERA failed a few years ago. This makes radical changes in the constitution virtually, if not technically, impossible. The point that has been made about the Supreme Court is a very good one. Changes made to the composition of the Court by a right-wing president and ratified by a right-wing senate will be with us for years. But again, this will probably not be a rapid change. New members can only be appointed when existing members either die, retire or are impeached. This doesn't happen all that often. And even conservative justices are, when all is said and done, first and foremost lawyers, and they tend to respect the rule of law and legalistic niceties. I doubt if even the most reactionary of supreme court justices would countenance a fascist dictatorship of a military coup. Again, remember that 1/3rd of the senate is elected every two years. If the American people really see things going on in the court that they don't like, then they can change the composition of the senate at these elections. I'm concerned, still, John, by your tendency to see Christian and Islamic fundamentalism as being equivalent. You mentioned the acts of terrorism against abortion clinics, and this is a good point. However, such actions can hardly be seen as representative of Christian fundamentalism. How many civilian hostages have Christian fundamentalist beheaded? Can anyone even conceive of some Christian group kidnapping, say, a pro-abortion doctor, sending videos of him in chains to the media, and then beheading him for TV cameras? I agree that, at root, all types of fundamentalism share certain characteristics, but they simply aren't all "equivalent", and comments about skinning people alive or disembowling them in the name of Christ are simply irrelevant. On the BBC yesterday, some "expert" or other said he saw the huge vote for Bush as being a reaction against the perceived secularization of society. He observed that an immense majority of voters declared themselves "believers" of some sort or another (evangelicans, catholics, jews, moslems, etc) and yet, he said, they had seen an increasing tendency in America to belittle the spiritual aspect of public life. Little things like insisting that public schools couldn't display "belenes" (traditional models of nativity scenes) even though these are pretty basic cultural symbols for the growing hispanic community, the city council who had to take down the menorah in the square in front of the town hall at hannukah in case it offended non-jews, seemed to indicate an increasing secular "fundamentalism" which was denying what many of these voters saw as a basic foundation stone of society. Now, I know that as a non-believer yourself, you might feel uncomfortable with this sort of view, but, according to the BBC's "expert", it seemed to influence people in the USA when they came to cast their votes. And, as you yourself observed, "The problem with giving people freedom is that they might use that freedom to do things they might not like. " John, I respect your views, and I'm sorry and surprised that you feel offended by what I said. To give offence was the last thing on my mind. I apologize of th way I expressed myself was in some way inappropriate. In the end, looking into the future is a most uncertain venture. You could be right to see dire consequences in GWB's re-election. I could be right in thinking that the system is somehow "self-righting". OK. I retire in 10 years time. If you're right and the USA has fallen to a Christian-fascist dicatorship or a military coup, I'll buy you dinner in Andalucia in 2014. I'll even spring for the Easyjet return fare....

There's a much less erudite debate going on at the moment over on the infinitely inferior TES forum regarding whether it is legitimate to challenge the verdict of the people. Although the level of debate is stunningly low, perhaps it is worth considering the question. Are we only democrats when the vote goes the way we like it? I happen to think the American people have picked badly, but picked they certainly have. It may have been a fairly close election, but this time, the verdict of the electoral college will match that of the popular vote. And this on a considerably increased turn-out. There may be all sorts of explanations for his victory, but I can't really see much new here. American elections have really been marketing exercises for the last 40 years at least. Many have suggested that Nixon lost to Kennedy because of his inability to look well-shaven on the television, and the "would you buy a used car from this man?" was, perhaps, the beginning of negative campaigning. There can have been few TV ads as effective in this campaign as the one Johnson used against Goldwater with the child, the flower and the mushroom cloud. Even the intrusion of revivalist religion into politics is nothing new. Who was that right-wing populist catholic who caused so much uproar in the 30's? Or to go back even further, what about William Jennings Bryant who made the speech about not seeing the American working man crucified on a cross of gold and was later the prosecutor in the Scopes Trial? Or the Christian Coalition which supported Reagan. So, there's nothing new about the manipulation of the media, there's nothing new about fundamentalist religion in politics, and there's certainly nothing new about American politicians spending obscene amounts of money on their campaigns. Are the issues new? American imperialism. Environmental degradation. Lack of health care. A tax system which favors the rich. No, not much new there... The point about the Supreme Court is well made. American lawyers all seem to live an inordinately long time, so appointments which Bush makes now will be around long after he is a dim memory. On teh other hand, I think John's view is unnecessarily apocalyptic. I can't see the Court banning abortion or making homosexual relationships (or heterosexual relationships outside of marriage) illegal. All lawyers are, by their nature, conservative, and this works both ways. There will be a slow but steady shift to the right, but probably not any sudden shift of emphasis. On the other hand, I would suggest that comparing Bush's reelection to the decision to appoint Mussolini is just a bit over the top. American presidents reign for only four years -- eight if they are re-elected -- and then they go. If, as I believe, Bush's economic and foreign policies are as unsuccessful in the next four years as they have been in the last, then, in 2008, a very different president will be elected. That is, after all, what democracy is all about. I think such statements also undervalue the beliefs of the millions of Americans who did vote for Bush. I think they were mistaken. Many of them were probably tricked or misled by the media. Many of them may have had "hidden agendas" (they worked for defense contractors or drug comapnies, they benefited from tax cuts, etc, ect). Many others may have been bigots or racists. But surely they can't all have been in these categories -- were they all gullible, or stupid or self-serving of rednecks? I don't think so. Some of them may have felt, mistakenly, I think, that Bush was taking a firm hand against a serious threat by Islamic fundamentalism against western values which I think most of us would share. Merely dismissing the views of such people really isn't the answer, in my opinion. I also take issue with the statement that there is some sort of moral equivalency between fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity. I don't happen to like either, but having lived through the Iranian Islamic Revolution and its aftermath, and having married into a family of Northern Ireland protestants, I can assure you, John, that fundamentalist Islam is much, much, much worse... If we are to understand what's just happen, I think we need to look at it with an open mind -- as historians should! -- rather than making highly exaggerated statements...

I think we need to be a little careful, here. It is possible to be a Christian and not to be a pacifist and yet to remain consistent... But I still agree that Bush's victory is much to be lamented. I can't say I was terribly impressed by Kerry, either, but anything would have been better than Bush... To coin a phrase, "vote for the millionaire of your choice, but VOTE!"

Something like that might make a good exercise for the IB Paper 1 examination which requires the students to assess the usefulness of sources based on their origin and purpose... However, I agree with Juan Carlos that otherwise it would seem to me to be rather a perverse way of looking at the history of European nations...

That would make a good unit...

Sorry, I didn't realize it had already been decided. It wasn't clear from Richard's original posting. I still think ther are important topics which stretch back before the 20th Century, but agree that if it's already been decided, it would be a waste of time and effort to reopen an old discussion. So, prune off the bits of my suggestions that go back to 1492, etc... I still think it would be a good idea to look at religion and race as a source of conflict and on the history of social democracy/labour unions/the welfare state, etc might be useful...

Richard, isn't this all a bit 20th Century? More and more, I find that my kids have trouble with "context"... I think it's approriate to trace things back a bit further. The following are just a few ideas along those lines which I haven't allowed myself enough time to elaborate sufficiently... Revolution and Reaction - French Revolution & its influence - Napoleon as a prototype - Metternich and Legitimacy - Russian Revolutions --> Stalinism - Fascist and Nazi "Revolutions" - Spanish Civil War Rise and Fall of Working Class Movements - Aims and origins of European trade unions - Aims and origins of European social democratic parties - Rise or working class "conservatism" - Decline in influence of European labour movement (falling membership, Thatcherism, neo-liberalism and labour laws, etc) - Shift to right of European social democratic movements (abandonment of Revolutionary Marxism in early 20th Century in GB, Fr, Germany; social democratic "Cold Warriors" -- eg Bevin, Brandt, etc; PSOE, New Labour, SPD, etc and the Third Way) Religion and Race a sources of conflict - 1492 in Spain - Religious Wars in Germany - Northern Ireland - Anti-semitism in European history - Black Africans in European history - European responses to decolonization - European responses to Islamic fundamentalism These are really sloppily put together and lack any sort of focus, but I do think we should try to look back a bit further than 1900, even if it's not any of the above...

We need to download some scores for a drama production. Don't mind paying but would rather avoid waiting for the mail service if possible -- it's SLOW to Spain sometimes...

The previous poster's account of the military planning that went into the invasion is masterful - I've copied it to distribute to my class! - and I don't think there is anything useful to add to it. However, I'd like to emphasize the domestic political aspect raised earlier in the thread. In the election campaign he had just won very narrowly -- and quite possibily fraudulently! -- JFK and the highly professional team of advisiors led by his brother had over and over again stressed his fierce anti-Communism. Whether or not he really was as anti-Communist as Nixon, it was felt by his team that in order to win, he had to appear to be. Remember that he was running against a sitting Vice-President who had a proven track record as a Red-baiter as a congressman, and who had the support of "war hero" Ike Eisenhower. This is why, for example, the Kennedy campaign went on and on about the "missile gap" which, they said, the Eisenhower administration had allowed the USSR to build up to the detriment of US security, even though Kennedy and his advisors knew through confidential candidate briefings that the supposed gap just didn't exist -- it was JFK's chance to prove that he was a more valiant Cold Warrior than his opponent. The trouble is that the "Camelot Myth" which grew up around JFK after his assassination has led observers to forget that he was, above all, a consumate "machine politician" who knew exactly which buttons to press both within the corrupt Democratic party machine and with regard to a public opinion still suffering from the after-effects of McCarthyism. Having established his anti-Communist bona fides during the campaign, it would have been difficult for JFK to abandon an anti-Communist operation planned by the previous adminstration. It would have looked as if he were the youngster chickening out on the plans of the older and wiser Ike. All of the above sounds a little anti-JFK, but it isn't. 1. His achievement in winning the presidency was considerable since he was (i) Roman Catholic, in a country which had WASP prejudices we could hardly imagine today, and (ii) running against a sitting VP backed by one of the most consistently popular presidents in US history. He just couldn't have done it without surrendering a few hostages to fortune, like compromising with Mayor Daly and other city bosses of his ilk, or like adopting a "more Catholic than the Pope" (it's a Spanish expression. Does it work in English?) attitude towards the "communist threat". 2. Even if he did feel he had to sound tough, his actions during the invasion and, more importantly, during the subsequent Cuban Missile Crisis were both intelligent and moderate. He refused to listen to the military hawks on the JCS who wanted him to commit US forces in support of the invasion, and later resisted the widely supported view of people like Curtis LeMay (another popular "war hero") that bombing and invasion of Cuba was essential. If you can, try to get hold of "The Fog of War" video. It's not exciting viewing in that it's mostly just a long series of interviews with Robert McNamara about his years in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, but I think it gives very valuable insights into the period and ought to be required viewing for all students of the period...

I've taught the International Baccalaureate for some years. I don't unerstand the reference to 10 subjects. Our students take six subjects, one each from: maths, science, native language, foreign language, and "man and society", and one more which can either be a fine arts subject, or another choice from the previous list. Three subjects are taken at standard level and three at higher level. This seems to work well. The spread of six subjects guarantees the breadth, while the three higher level subject are studied in considerable depth. The compulsory "Theory of Knowledge" class attempts to tie together the learning across the six subjects. As far as the number of exams is concerned, there would appear to be fewer than under the present English system in which, over a period of three years, students may take 10+ GCSEs, 5+ ASs and 3 or 4 A2s!

I think on this question we have thrown the baby out with the bath water. What do I mean? Well, I do rather rely on anecdotes, so here's another. Last year, I was teaching an IB Higher Level class. I gave the students a little quiz on the "facts" (Who were the members of the 3rd Estate? What were the cahiers de doleance? Who was Abbe Sieyes? etc). One on the students protested: "But we're in the IB class. We don't do facts. We only do analysis..." Of course, the problem is that you can't "do analysis" if you don't possess any "facts" upon which to base your theories... It's unfortunate that all-too-often these days students appear to believe that "I think" is a valid way to express oneself in a history essay. I read time after time the regurgitation of poorly understood theories unbacked by any sort of historical evidence to back them up. For example, my class has just finished an IB essay asking them to compare the impact of Mussolini and Mao on world affairs. Four of them wrote "The PRC had no traditional foreign policy." I don't know where they got this from -- probably some website or other, I'll google it later -- but that's not the point. It's a rather startling statement. It might be true, or it might not be. But at the very least, it needs to be backed up by some sort of evidence. If the students don't know about Zhou's intervention in the Bandung Conference, the invasion of Tibet, the war with India, the Shining Path and other Maoist parties in the 3rd World, the Vietnam and Korean Wars, and Nixon's China Card, how can they even begin to have a valid analysis? They have to learn some facts as well as learning the analytical skills. Clearly, the ability to analyze the facts is far more important than the facts in isolation. My point is that both are necessary. A good example of the division of fact from skill can be seen in many, many GCSE textbooks I've seen recently in which accompany the briefest and most superficial account of "what happened" with 6-10 two-three line "sources" for the students to analyze. They just don't have sufficient background or perspective from the inadequate account which accompanies them to react in any very valid way to the "sources" presented. (I would in any case challenge the validity of any source which consisted of a couple of lines wrenched from a much longer piece of writing.) I'm not asking for a return to the sort of rote learning of prime ministers and battles I lived through in secondary school -- although I do think there's a lot to be said for the story approach to history common in the primary school I attended in the 1950s, but that's another argument. As I said in my post on the Sean Lang thread, I remember my relief when I accidentally discovered the Mark Pullen and Tollund Man materials from the SHP. I could begin to show my students (I was teaching 10-year-olds at the time) the joy of "doing history", something no-one had ever done in my school before. On the other hand, I reject the claim that learning historical facts, as opposed to hands-on Mark Pullen activities, must, of necessity, be "boring". Anything can be boring if it's taught badly! It all depends on how you do it, and if you yourself believe what you're teaching is important and interesting. I met a woman I taught 25 years ago the other day, and she told me she still had John Kay's Flying Shuttle stuck in her mind from when I'd done the Industrial Revolution with them. Now, if that was all she remembered about the Industrial Revolution, that would be a sad story, but it wasn't, and it does go to show that with a bit of effort and imagination, you can even make something as intrinsically boring as John Kay's Flying Shuttle so interesting the students remeber it a quarter of a century later! I teach in an American school. Skills acquisition is frowned upon. The American history curriculum involves delivering huge quantities of infromation and then testing its retention with multiple choice/true-false/short answer tests. We had to re-write the curriculum guide a couple of years ago. The school shipped in -- a huge expense -- a expert curriculum consultant from the US. I tried to suggest that there needed to be a skills element within the document. He rejected the suggestion out of hand, so our curriculum says things like: "Students will understand the main events and personalities of the Italian Renaissance" Totally useless! But very American. But this does mean that no American high school student would cover Hitler four times in three years! So, to sum up my rambling, I think the pendulum has swung too far. There needs to be a balance between skills and content. In the UK, I think you lean too far one way, and in the US, too far the other...