National historical perspectives

My mother went to school in Britain and I went to school in Norway. The other day we started talking about biased historical perspective or black and white historical teaching. She told me that when she first came to Norway she had to change her view of Britain's role in history. The British empire and the colonies had been a great part of her schooling and she had been thought to be proud of British history. In Norway, however, she was told that an empire is hardly anything to be proud of; it it just exploitation. This was of course not too many years since colonies had reclaimed their independence. Of course she started school before the working class historians had had any impact although historians as E.P Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm might have started writing. And even if "history from below" had been strong in university circles, I doubt if schools would have promoted that view. My impression is that British schools still tell the history from above, although it may vary. Independent of the curriculum, a teacher's is as important for the impression pupils get of history.

My experience of history at school was much more a history from below. We did not learn much of the Viking kings, but we learned of Viking agriculture. We did not learn about the Norwegian Medieval Empire, but of how the Great Plague infected merchants and peasants. We did not learn much of the Norwegian-Danish kings in early modern times, but how Lutheranism and Catechisms spread literacy to greater parts of the population. And even though we heard about the Swedish-Norwegian kings of the Nineteenth-Century and of Parliamentarianism, the use of power from streams and waterfalls to the textile industry and the new electric power stations creating a working class in addition to the agricultural sector.

When I went to school, it was still important to emphasis the generation that built the country; that is the building of the Welfare State after 1945. Norway was still not a very wealthy country in the 1980s. However, oil has made Norway a rich country now and I suppose this will influence how history is though. The impression I got as a secondary school teacher was that children should know Norway as a peace nation. It is emphasised that Norway has not gone to war since the Viking Age  - well, if one does not include involvement in Afghanistan in the resent years - and that Norwegian politicians work as peace negotiators all over the world.

As my mother experienced how British and Norwegian schools in the 1950s told quite different histories of Great Britain, I assume the same will be the case today. My experience with historiography is that the interest lies in the development of different historical schools and not how these are used by the public. Even though one historical school is leading in a country it does not necessarily mean that this is the leading view thought in schools. It would have been interesting to do a comparison between countries when it comes to historical curriculum and how history is thought.

Comments

[Marie]

I come from a bilingual country, with two different colonial past (Britanic and French). I had been to a French school all my life, but switched to an anglophone university as I grew up. The historical perspective was really different, even if the subjects studied had nothing to do with history. While I had learnt all my life that the French people from here had been defeated and had to fight for the survival of their language and culture, the anglophones saw the history as a victory and a renforcement of their strenght. Strangely, the gap between those two cultures seems there to last. Interesting note!

[maria lafayette]

Hi,
It was good to find your writting today. I like very much to read what you post here and I find very meaningful what you say about "doing" history. Charles Tilly sais somewhere that the main purpose of history is about reconstitution and connection. To him, reconstitution is the effort to reconstruct ' a round life as people lived it". I do not know how much one can reconsruct...but the second bit , connection, I can see it, as far as the author sais from where he is taking the connection. I hope I was clear in my portenglish ( portuguese and english)