If Only....

I was listening to You and Yours on Radio 4 this am(I need to interject here and say Radio 4 was on form this morning, from Belinda and Mark Oaten on Woman's Hour to a piece on how hedgehogs have been affected by global warming) and they had a feature on the teaching of history in schools. Apparantly it is going through one of its periodic crisis and there is worry that children are being taught the 'wrong' history, not enough history, etc etc. I cast my mind back to my own days studying history at school. It was always one of my favourite subjects, and I can still recite all the Kings and Queens from Henry VIII to Elizabeth 2 (I'm very hazy pre Tudors, and I get a bit muddled up about how many Georges there were). But I do remember the most pointless, stupid, annoying, misguided exercise we were forced to do at GCSE. One of the elements of my History GCSE was "History Around Us" which involved going to Berry Head to 'study' the Napoleonic fortifications there (or rather the ruins that remain). Fair enough. The worst bit, though, was an 'empathy' exercise we had to do, where we imagined we were a solider living in the barracks and writing back to our loved ones about how wet, cold, miserable etc we were. What exactly was the point of this? If only I could do this piece of coursework now, I would write the following:

My Dear Eliza,

So I am up here a -shivering on Berry Head fort, waiting to fight that old Frenchy Napoleon. But it is really a bit of a miracle I'm writing to you, isn't it, considering that I am a poor farm labourer drafted into service here, and that I've probably never had any formal schooling whatsover, considering that the barracks in these forts were only manned until 1805, and the First Education Act didn't make primary schooling compulsory until 1870, and even then it wasn't free. But my darling I love you so much I somehow miraculously acquired literacy! Also of course, I'll have to sell my body to send you this letter, considering that before the introduction of the penny post on 5th December 1839, postage was hideously expensive. As a labourer I'd probably earn about 4p a day - the same as it costs to send a letter 7 miles! Any furtherafield and it would be 6 pence. Stil, telling you how cold it is and how I'm playing cards with the lads is worth that expense, even if it is a tad anachronistic.
Of course, I am a bit disturbed that a 20th century schoolchild is entering my head. Can't imagine schools encouraging 'empathy' dairies for Holocaust victims, or getting kids to pretend to be Pol Pot. But hey I'm just a soldier in some war no-one remembers very well. In fact, let's not tell the kids anything about the politics of the actual war, or why and how what Napoleon was up to mattered, as long as they show they can imagine what it was like to be in a cold stone building before the invention of radiators, TVs, and I-pods. Cos, yeah, that's history, and that's how to make it cool.

With all my love, Jamesxxx

At school, to make these letters extra authentic, we smeared the paper with cold tea bags and dried them in the oven, so the paper went all crinkly and brown. I'd do that with this letter too.

for a detailed explanation of what when on at the forts (really) see www.torbytes.co.uk/op/tm7/lv2/item370.htm