Wealden Times | 189 | November 2017 | Gift supplement inside
Wealden Times - The lifestyle magazine for the Weald
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Education<br />
Remember, remember<br />
Susan Elkin stresses the importance of teaching children the history behind many of our seasonal celebrations<br />
Credit: FreeImages.com/Picaland * ‘<strong>November</strong>’ published in Lupercal, 1960. Ted Hughes was Poet Laureate from 1984-2008.<br />
Ted Hughes, often a bit lugubrious, called<br />
<strong>November</strong>* “the month of the drowned dog”<br />
which seems a bit hard for the season of bonfires,<br />
traditions and looking forward to Christmas.<br />
I do think, though, that many schools miss a topical trick<br />
or two in <strong>November</strong>. Halloween on 31 October dominates<br />
the start of the month and many schools are full of American<br />
style carved pumpkins, cut out spiders and cheerful<br />
witchery. It’s become commercially huge in recent years.<br />
I think we should also teach children that Halloween means<br />
the eve of All Hallows’ Day which is another name for All<br />
Saints’ Day. It’s known as the Day of the Dead throughout<br />
continental Europe and taken very seriously with cemetery<br />
visits to remember deceased relations and so on. In Italy, France<br />
and some other countries All Saints’ Day is a public holiday.<br />
Yes it’s fine to have fun with blackened teeth<br />
and spooky Halloween hats but let’s also make<br />
children aware of the origins of it all.<br />
And what about Guy Fawkes? Yes there will be firework<br />
parties on 5 <strong>November</strong> but do we actually talk seriously<br />
to children about what probably remains the greatest<br />
foiled 00013MHSWT185x130_Layout terrorist plot in our history? 1 19/09/<strong>2017</strong> The effect 14:03 of the Page 1<br />
1605 Gunpowder Plot stretches right into the present<br />
day – and until the mid 19th century it was compulsory<br />
for communities to celebrate the thwarting of it.<br />
What an opportunity to get children to think about<br />
the tensions between protestant Britain (yes we’d sort of<br />
been united with Scotland for four years by 1605) and<br />
the Catholics who wanted something quite different.<br />
Parallels with some of what is happening today?<br />
There are also lessons about justice in the Gunpowder<br />
Plot story. Guy Fawkes, who has gone down in history<br />
as the villain was the original ‘fall guy’. He wasn’t the<br />
planner or leader. He was brutally tortured, though.<br />
And while we’re on the subject of topical things to<br />
do in <strong>November</strong> do we do enough to make children<br />
aware of what we’re actually remembering on 11<br />
<strong>November</strong>? Every child should read War Horse at the<br />
very least. And some of the devastating poetry – shades<br />
of Hughes’s drowned dog, perhaps, except that the<br />
casualties in the mud, millions of them, were human.<br />
History – taught properly – is about a great deal<br />
more than covering set ‘topics’ and ticking boxes.<br />
Let’s encourage children to think and question.<br />
Not too big, Not too small, Just right.<br />
The perfect size school to unlock the potential in every child.<br />
We have an enviable record of Cranbrook entry success over the past 10 years, a 100% CE pass rate<br />
and each year our pupils win scholarships to many leading independent senior schools.<br />
MARLBOROUGH<br />
HOUSE<br />
SCHOOL<br />
Marlborough House School, Hawkhurst, Cranbrook, Kent TN18 4PY 01580 753555<br />
163 wealdentimes.co.uk<br />
MarlboroughHouseWT188.indd 1 19/09/<strong>2017</strong> 14:17