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TEEN-SOUNDING TEACHERS DODGED
Andrew West exclusively reveals:
I have often asked teachers why relatively few kids choose to study history in years 11 and 12.
Their response is overwhelmingly the same: “They tell us history is not going to help them get a lucrative job?”
Fair enough. But why do they always answer as though they’re asking a question? Is that possibly why so few students study history—because history teachers are all uptalkers?
UPDATE. West’s SMH pal Bruce Elder has offended the citizens of a Victorian border town:
Wodonga has been labelled as dreary, unattractive and not worthy of visiting by a metropolitan daily newspapers travel editor.
The Wodonga entry on The Sydney Morning Heralds website carries two paragraphs and points to Albury for more details.
The site, until yesterday, also carried population figures for both Albury and Wodonga that were 20 years out of date ...
The newspapers travel editor and author Bruce Elder said he was just being honest ...
“My job is to pass judgments on destinations and while it is subjective, I would like someone to prove me wrong.
“Wodonga is just another big suburb.”
Elder—who once claimed 3000 people died every week in the US due to drink-driving—was similarly snobbish about Alaska. He’d be happier if these dull places were ruled by Fidel Castro, “a man who cared about nationhood and put his heart where his ideology was.” Prove him wrong!
Sadly, there are no history babes either!
Posted by Pat Patterson on 2006 02 01 at 09:50 AM • permalinkTheir response is overwhelmingly the same: “They tell us history is not going to help them get a lucrative job?”
i think that’s a polite way of saying that history is dead boring.
OT: why doesn’t the RSS feed work anymore?
Posted by benson swears a lot on 2006 02 01 at 09:58 AM • permalinkWith respect to uptalkers, I first noticed the phenomenon when I worked for a bank in Charlotte, NC. It seemed, at the time, to be an attribute of the higher levels of the professional class, and frankly it drove me crazy. My theory is that uptalking - ending a declarative statement with an upward inflection of the voice - is a kind of underhanded way of gaining implied consent to whatever the speaker is saying (when someone asks a question, or what sounds like a question, one tends to nod politely).
”...put his heart where his ideology was.”
It must be pretty crowded with his head up there too.Posted by Mystery Meat on 2006 02 01 at 11:05 AM • permalinkPat Patterson — Not even Rachel Weisz in “The Mummy”?
As for the question thing, in the words of Alyson Hannigan… “This one time? In journalism school?”
Paco — It could be a natural mistake. When I added a British flag to my protest regalia in solidarity with the Brits after the Tube bombings, one indignant young MoveOnBot demanded to know why I was carrying a Confederate Flag.
Note of course, that I am using “natural” in its early-nineteenth century context.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 02 01 at 11:09 AM • permalinkIf you can’t be fair, Elder, at least be funny. My college town was once described as “Fargo without the funny bits.” It’s hard not to smile at that one.
Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2006 02 01 at 11:28 AM • permalinkO/T. D’ya see that another Fidel fan, Whacking Day’s own Thom Lyons, has finally released the legal hounds on Tex. That this serial pissant has recourse to the Victorian taxpayers bolso to try and intimidate such a peerless debunker as Tex is a ferkin outrage.
But Tex has nothing to fear, as an examination of the Vic Legal Aid brochure indicates that Thom would have to swear an oath to initiate the gag order.
Thom is plainly a stranger to the truth
(to put it very mildly indeed), so there’s no chance of anything coming of this. Even in Brackistan. Surely.That was archaeology which is a form of history for people that don’t get skin cancer easily.
Posted by Pat Patterson on 2006 02 01 at 12:02 PM • permalinkUptalking absolutely did come from Gaelic speakers. American Southerners have been uptalking for a couple of centuries, mostly because so many of them are descended from the Irish, the Scots, and the Welsh.
Who doesn’t love history? And who, ignoring history, doesn’t have to repeat its mistakes? (Those are real questions, btw) Unfortunately, history teachers these days are teaching it as a social plan designed to show nasty, brutish Westerners the error of their racist ways. No wonder kids don’t want to bother.
16: I thought it(uptalking) was largely a southern thing!
Richard: I quite understand; one might suggest that this “natural” was also, perhaps, somewhat “disturbed in his intellectuals”, so that your encounter might have been with a specimen of the true “depraved blockhead” - a type that is frequently found skulking in the crooked alleys, gin mills and doss houses of places like MoveOn.
I recall enjoying history in high school (yeah, yeah, years ago, I know!!). The teachers were boring as hell, but the books were good.
So I expect that RebeccaH has it right, and the books have changed to being boring as hell. Wotta surprise, the kids don’t like them.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 02 01 at 02:04 PM • permalink2 history teachers I heard on Radio National last year said that while Modern History was very unpopular Ancient History was gaining students. Their explanation was that what appealed about Ancient was that the students couldn’t be blamed for anything. Maybe the politically correct western hating history teachers are the cause of their own demise.
I have often wondered if one of the reasons Gallipoli has become so popular with young Australians is that they can celebrate their history relatively safe from the carping condemning commentariat.
I don’t know much about history teachers and their mores, it being a while since I darkened the doors of a school. I tend to defer to the opinion of the Great O’Rourke, that no self respecting child believes what a teacher says anyway.
I think there’s something to this given recent election results in Anglosphere nations. (What’s going on in the UK though?!)
#21, I had a little problem with the writer of the article conflating uptalk (or “terminal high risers” if you like) with Valley Girl talk. To me they’re not the same dialect at all, although Valley Girls do use that rising inflection at the end of every sentence. Then again, Valley Girls are Californians, and everybody knows native Anglo-Californians are really Okies (read: Oklahomans, Texans, Arkansans, etc.) in disguise. Therefore the Gaelic origin holds.
In the US the state of history education is dire, indeed. I teach intro Am Govt most semesters to upwards of 95 students. If I find 5 with any knowledge of US history at all I’m always surprised.
OTOH, having had history ed majors in some of my classes, I’m hardly surprised at what passes for teaching history in K-12. Basically, it’s ‘social studies’ not history until at least grade 10. Even then it’s diatribes against Dead White Males more than stories of any sort. Sad.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2006 02 01 at 10:22 PM • permalinkthe world champions of the rising inflection are aussies. just watch any aussie soap or kath & kim
23
I had a little problem with the writer of the article conflating uptalk (or “terminal high risers” if you like) with Valley Girl talk. To me they’re not the same dialect at all, although Valley Girls do use that rising inflection at the end of every sentence.
About that problem? Like, if you would like, gratuitously and frequently add “like” to the sentences? Would that, like, translate from THR to VGT? If not? Like maybe you could add “you know,” you know?
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 02 02 at 01:42 PM • permalink
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I studied history in years 11 and 12 and the archaeology in university…..
The Indiana Jones movies lied. There aren’t any treasures to find or nazis to shoot these days.
Now I am trying to become a history teacher….Until then, I’ll keep teaching English in Japan :)