Yes, guilty as charged.
I am responding to the Education Secretary, Michael Gove's accusation yesterday that History teachers in Britain play Disney films during lessons. Yes, I do, and the one example he gave -Robin Hood - I have used for many years. I also show Thomas the Tank Engine, Cabaret,Horrible Histories, Monty Python and Dances with Wolves as well. So there.
Gove's argument is that films such as Robin Hood, which is an animated cartoon, 'infantalises' children. He said teaching was being "crushed under the weight of play-based pedagogy which infantilises children, teachers and our culture". I suppose he is referring to the 'nanny state'. It certainly was not teachers who instigated a spoon-fed, target driven, infantalised culture.
In an article in the Daily Mail there was a wonderful image of Adolf Hitler as a Mr Mencharacter, referring to an activity using the characters to explain the rise of the Nazis. Ironically, the creator of these figures, Roger Hargreaves, celebrated his birthday on the same day that Michael Gove made his attack on modern British history teaching. I must confess that the Mr Men books were an integral part of my daughter's upbringing, with a 'Mr Bump' ice pack to soothe her exuberant toddler activities and 'Little Miss Sunshine' pyjamas. Unfortunately I have never seen the 'Mr Hitler' character or lesson resource, which was produced by a teacher working in France and available at www.activehistory.co.uk. Neither have I met anyone who has actually used it. Therefore I feel that I cannot fairly comment on the activity, even though the drawing amuses me!
In my role as a History teacher I need to ensure that history is relevant and engaging. Not all teenagers want to learn about history so anything that captures their attention and thus sparks interest is always good. When I start the topic of railways and the Industrial Revolution, for example, we get to watch an eight minute episode of Thomas the Tank Engine. That is all. The students laugh, they can relate to the programme via nostalgia as they would have watched it as youngsters. I have their attention at least for the rest of that lesson.
Using a clip from Robin Hood - and it is just a clip - is a fun way to look at how people from history have been interpreted. In this case it is King John and the classes look at modern and contemporaneous sources to try to develop their skills of analysis and reliability. The other option is to read the sources solely from text books. But surely five minutes of Disney will not render the lesson a playgroup?
Learning at school has to be cross-curricular and address multiple intelligences, delivered through a variety of teaching styles. So yes, sometimes model making takes place during History lessons to help the kinaesthetic learners. Drama, art, music, maths and creative writing are there too. Not as many trips as I would like (see my last blog, below) but generally there are a variety of activities aimed at the different abilities of the students and to keep the topics interesting. So yes, this includes animated cartoons sometimes.
When I was a pupil at school the complaints of education not being as good as when our parents were there still existed. Nothing has changed there: things are never as good as they were in 'our day'. I know that the emphasis on spelling and grammar is not as rigorous as it used to be nor is the method of rote learning. But children today are exposed to so much information and the expectations are so much higher, despite what the general opinion is of them. As I said in my last blog, (see my website at http://www.ajsefton.com/#!may-blog/c1k9e ) I only studied seven subjects and I was in the top set.
Children work so hard and will probably be working until they are eighty years old. Really what is wrong with ten minutes of Disney once a term? It makes History lessons accessible and relevant. So there.
Visit my site at http://ajsefton.com
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