Pet Hates........or FFS

[walpurgis]

I'm just trying to think of an instance where what history I do know has been useful................and I'm afraid I can't! Unless you include pub quizzes and they hardly warrant the hours and hours of teaching.

They (whoever 'they' are) say that history repeats itself. I'm more inclined to think human behaviour repeats itself, but that still suggests that nothing is learnt from the past!

[Crackles]

I don't think it is compulsory for all 5 years of secondary though?

In any case they are obviously failing, I had a youngster asking me who Hitler was the other day, and was he anything to do with World War 2.

In fact even amongst people older than me there seems to be a huge dearth of historical knowledge, substituted instead with absurd lefty revisionist history taken directly from the Daily Mirror Book Of Facts.

Yep. The BBC is the worst. They are far more concerned with social engineering and imposing their middle-class lefty worldview on the population than actually representing facts. Their current dishonesty regarding the suffragettes being a classic example, or their comical placing of black characters in historical dramas.

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[Macca]

Yep. The BBC is the worst. They are far more concerned with social engineering and imposing their middle-class lefty worldview on the population than actually representing facts. Their current dishonesty regarding the suffragettes being a classic example, or their comical placing of black characters in historical dramas.

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The BBC are one of the worst offenders I agree, especially when it comes to topics like slavery and The Empire. Not seen their re-writing of the suffragettes yet but I'm sure it will have me shouting at the telly.

[Joe]

I don't think it is compulsory for all 5 years of secondary though?

In any case they are obviously failing, I had a youngster asking me who Hitler was the other day, and was he anything to do with World War 2.

In fact even amongst people older than me there seems to be a huge dearth of historical knowledge, substituted instead with absurd lefty revisionist history taken directly from the Daily Mirror Book Of Facts.

That's the problem once you move from bare facts (WWII began in 1939) to analysis (what were the causes of WWII?). The former is objective, the latter subjective. I bet that Japanese schoolchildren learn a very different version of the causes and events of WWII than British children.

[Macca]

That's the problem once you move from bare facts (WWII began in 1939) to analysis (what were the causes of WWII?). The former is objective, the latter subjective. I bet that Japanese schoolchildren learn a very different version of the causes and events of WWII than British children.

Possibly, although the cause of WW2 for Japan was entirely different from the cause of WW2 for Britain and Germany. Same applies to Russia and the USA.

It isn't really the analysis that is the problem. The problem is you can't even begin an analysis without already knowing the basic, undisputed facts. I've no problem with someone's analysis being different from my own, that's interesting and a starting point for debate. It's when their analysis is based upon factual errors or an ignorance of the facts that I despair.

[walpurgis]

I blame Franz Ferdinand. If he hadn't got himself bumped off, we might have avoided WW1. The after effects of which (oppression of the German people) led directly to the rise of the Nazis and consequently WW2!

[struth]

ww2 reasons are a bit like an airliner crash. lots of different things compounded to create it. same to an extent on ww1.
it should be taught worldwide but it wont be. will it happen again; well it has in smaller ways and probably always will. we are a belligerent animal

[Joe]

Possibly, although the cause of WW2 for Japan was entirely different from the cause of WW2 for Britain and Germany. Same applies to Russia and the USA.

It isn't really the analysis that is the problem. The problem is you can't even begin an analysis without already knowing the basic, undisputed facts. I've no problem with someone's analysis being different from my own, that's interesting and a starting point for debate. It's when their analysis is based upon factual errors or an ignorance of the facts that I despair.

Who gets to decide what are facts?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/...cific-war.html

'An association of veterans and nationalist Japanese politicians and scholars is to hold a conference in Tokyo on Thursday to consider the question of why the United States started the war in the Pacific in 1941.

The conflict is generally understood to have started with the Japanese attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii, on the morning of December 7. But the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact is marking the 70th anniversary of the raid in Tokyo on Thursday to discuss America's "responsibility" for the war.

"The ultimate goal of the association is to explain the true facts of history, especially when it comes to major events, such as the causes of the Pacific War," Hiromichi Moteki, secretary general of the society, told The Daily Telegraph.

"For this event, the main point is to show that the responsibility for the war was not Japan's, but America's," he said.

The society's primary aims are to promote its own understanding of history, with its scholars claiming the Nanjing Masacre is a fabrication of the Chinese government, that no women were forced into sexual slavery as "comfort women" for Japan's troops in the 1930s and 1940s and that the violent subjugation of the Korean peninsula was in the best interests of the local population.'

[Macca]

Who gets to decide what are facts?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/...cific-war.html

'An association of veterans and nationalist Japanese politicians and scholars is to hold a conference in Tokyo on Thursday to consider the question of why the United States started the war in the Pacific in 1941.

The conflict is generally understood to have started with the Japanese attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii, on the morning of December 7. But the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact is marking the 70th anniversary of the raid in Tokyo on Thursday to discuss America's "responsibility" for the war.

"The ultimate goal of the association is to explain the true facts of history, especially when it comes to major events, such as the causes of the Pacific War," Hiromichi Moteki, secretary general of the society, told The Daily Telegraph.

"For this event, the main point is to show that the responsibility for the war was not Japan's, but America's," he said.

The society's primary aims are to promote its own understanding of history, with its scholars claiming the Nanjing Masacre is a fabrication of the Chinese government, that no women were forced into sexual slavery as "comfort women" for Japan's troops in the 1930s and 1940s and that the violent subjugation of the Korean peninsula was in the best interests of the local population.'

The Americans introduced sanctions, especially the oil embargo, which put Japan in the position of either backing down or going to war. Since it was unlikely that they would back down it was pretty much accepted by America that once sanctions began war with Japan would break out sooner or later.

So this is something that you can argue about based on the facts - Japan invades Manchuria - oil embargo - Pearl harbour attack. Who is ultimately responsible?

I agree once you get down into the fine detail then it is harder to be sure of the facts, but I don't see the relevance to teaching history in school as that will of necessity be done with a broader brush if they want to cover sufficient ground.

[struth]

i knew a few folk who were prisoners of the japs and they were not nice folk. also one of them said he had seen what they did to the chinese.
i met a german who said the west fabricated the death camps too.....