Two twitter conversations this morning got me thinking about first my history teachers when I was at school and being thankful for having such good history teachers. (It's Thanksgiving in US today hence the being thankful thoughts.) This all started because of Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain.
I was very lucky to have 3 totally different but brilliant history teachers during my secondary school education. I started secondary school at Newquay Tretherras School in Cornwall. Mr Jackson was my history teacher for the 2 years I was there. We did early British History with him and then right up to the industrial revolution. Mr Jackson's specialist subjects in history though were the Princes in the Tower and the Tudors. Mr Jackson organised a Tudor evening where we all got to try Tudor food and I developed my love of syllabub. Us girls thought Mr Jackson was quite dishy but impossibly old, thinking back he wasn't even 30! But the one aspect of history that he taught that really made him stand out was the Princes in the Tower. He was a member of the Richard III Society who want to promote a fairer more accurate picture of Richard III. Mr Jackson also had his own mission to prove that Richard III was not the only one who could have and had motive to kill the Princes in the Tower.
Mr Jackson taught us how to look at different evidence, evaluate it, search for bias, and make our own conclusions using the evidence we had. Until that point I thought history was just all fact that could not be challenged. I learnt for the first time that history is told differently by each person who tells it and you can learn a lot more if you understand the motivations for why that person is telling the story. History wasn't set in stone it was a huge puzzle to decipher.
In my 3rd year at school (year 9 now) we moved to Yorkshire and I attended the Hayfield School
where I chose to study history for GCSE. My teacher was Mr Fleet, an eccentric Scot, the type of teacher they just don't make any more. He called the dustbins a "waste paper receptical" a personal stereo was a "walking man" and when my brothers class were unreceptive he would produce a turnip wearing a hat and shades and address his lessons to the turnip, who would answer all questions in a suitably turnipy voice! With Mr Fleet we learnt about the wild west, the history of energy and the Northern Ireland troubles.
For A-level I continued to be taught by Mr Fleet, we had European History with him, Gustaf Adolfus, Catherine and Peter the Great, the Louis' of France all covered. He ran our lessons like lectures in preparation for university. I was always grateful for that. Our other history teacher was Mr Saddler, a red headed, left wing, Yorkshire firebrand. He could have been standing on a soap box in the middle of Donny Market in the 19th Century or early 20th speaking up for the working man and injustices to women. His lessons were run very differently, we were learning about 19 Century British History, Engels, Tom Paine, Jeremy Bentham, the corn law, the Catholic Emancipation Act, Wellington, Castlereagh and the working men of Britain.
Our favourite pursuit was to distract Mr Saddler from his task and get him to talk off topic, anything going on in politics was bound to get him going. Margaret Thatcher had just resigned and it was a great time to discuss British politics with him. The majority of the class were Tories largely because their parents were, my friend Ruth was the lone Lib Dem and then there was Mr Saddler and me holding our own against the rest placing our faith in Labour. I'd love to be able to ask Mr Saddler what he thinks of the last 17 years in UK politics. I am sure he is dismayed by most of it.
I had many wonderful teachers whilst at school, and since I have had the pleasure to work with some excellent teachers. But my 3 history teachers were so consistently wonderful and so utterly different. I am so thankful for being lucky enough to have been taught by them and to have learnt from them all.
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