EU/USA Class Wars
The recent pagan festival of spring (called Easter in Christian mythology) got me thinking. It got me thinking about America and about my time in Arkansas. It got me thinking of this simply because of the down right fascist views that were spouted from the pulpit of the church I regularly attended and the truly terrifying manner in which young and otherwise intelligent Arkansans gobbled up such tripe every Sunday morning - and evening. And Wednesday evenings. And weekends when they embarked on their misguided mini-mission trips to go convert the heathens and build new churches for poor black folk.From here my thoughts expanded to include the University of Arkansas as a whole, and from there to comparing it to my experiences at the University of Essex. (Which is in the UK, e.g. Britain, e.g. Europe)
And you know what? I am thoroughly unhappy with both. In my room I have a slightly awkward photo of myself wearing a ridiculous cloak and mortarboard while holding a plastic scroll. I spent three years studying history and walked away with a good degree. And yet I know next to nothing about history. And what’s more, what little I do remember, was almost all learnt in Arkansas. Needless to say this truth fits rather uneasily with my easily enthusiastic anti-Arkansan rhetoric.
Why? I’ll tell you why. Because despite paradoxically having a heavier work load in Arkansas than I did in Essex the problem was that Essex was trying to hard, and Arkansas was not trying hard enough.
Continued in the comments section…
posted by Benjamin Nakizo @ 2:41 am
3 Comments:
You see, the problem with History at Essex was that over the course of three years I took twelve courses. Each course was highly specialised. And that was the problem. At Essex I dived straight in to discussions about such relevant and exciting things as gender issues in the domestic economies of 17th century mud huts in small German principalities. Then in my next class we would be talking about something like the history of garden gnomes in local Essex villages throughout the Elizabethan ear – usually from a feminist perspective. What they were trying to do was give us the details needed to fill in the framework of history. But that’s the problem! Where was the framework? Why were we not discussing about why there were mud huts in Germany? Who ruled them? What religion were they? When did they become that religion? When did they stop being that religion? When did the ruler die? Did the new ruler have different political allegiances? When did huts stop being made out of mud?
Once such BASIC facts have been established then yes, lets progress to look at how peasant women interacted with their men and what control they had over family finances – but please – until we know the outline we simply can not begin the process of colouring in. The focus on speciality subjects and the complete neglect of providing wider outlines through which we could view the past was the problem with the University of Essex. Interestingly it was the three outside courses I took, all ‘introductions to’ in which I learnt the most. They were good courses because they focussed on outlines, on the basics. One might argue that it was our own responsibility to find out what actually happened in our own time – but get real, we were students. Far too busy watching The Office and playing Risk. Get with it.
In Arkansas however the opposite was true. The ‘big picture’ was presented perfectly and this made lessons a lot more enjoyable. You felt like you were actually learning something. In class you would be swept along half a century of politics, technology and war and you would learn a great deal. But the problem here was that soon it became real Mickey Mouse stuff as assessments took the form of book reports and multiple choice questionnaires which a monkey could happily pass with flying colours. Yet the basic outline, the structure of history, was given to you, and further more detailed research of your own was therefore possible. You were working in a logical manner, from big down to the small. Working forwards and not backwards as you were at Essex.
Interestingly these differences in teaching between the EU and the USA might actually manifest themselves in the differing attitudes of their respective peoples. France and Germany for example may turn their nose up at American aggression and go ‘Oh no, we can’t get involved in Iraq – do you know the misery you will cause to poor Iraqi women who will find their household income slashed, think of the turmoil in domestic finances – its trouble I tell you’. Whereas Americans quite rightly bellow ‘In the name of Jesus we smite you little brown people because if we don’t install a friendly regime then soon Western civilisation will find itself without oil and then how will we drive our pick up trucks to church?’
And you know what? – They are both right and both wrong. France will find it hard to bring their fine wines to the market if Middle Eastern oil supplies are dominated by dictators and/or Islamic populists. Similarly America can’t effectively occupy a foreign nation if it doesn’t stop for a split second and consider the smaller scale problems that need to be addressed if it is to succeed (e.g. realising that Muslims are just as messed up as Christians were four hundred years ago).
So there you have it. In a nut shell – Why I know no history. The pros and cons of both the European and American university systems and why Iraq was a failure for the Atlantic alliance – all in a nut shell.
And you wonder why my blogs are so long. Pish.
in a nut shell. nice. :) you know, sometimes i really feel like i've learned nothing as well. maybe someday i'll look back and realize that i actually did learn something. just that by that point i've forgotten it all...
History, unlike subjects such as maths and biology, is exceptionally broad and down to varying interpretations. By this I mean that any framework will neglect a massive amount of subject matter and detail.
Generally speaking, however, I too enjoyed (in social science, at least) that the wider and more broad-spectrum elements of the curriculum were the most beneficial.
They allow you to build up a good understanding of the wider issues at play in society, which gives you a better grounding in interpreting the reasoning behind events that you focus on later.
If that makes sense.
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