Surrey Homes | SH37 | November 2017 | Gift supplement inside

Education
Remember, remember
Susan Elkin stresses the importance of teaching children the history behind many of our seasonal celebrations
Credit: FreeImages.com/Picaland * ‘November’ published in Lupercal, 1960. Ted Hughes was Poet Laureate from 1984-2008.
Ted Hughes, often a bit lugubrious, called
November* “the month of the drowned dog”
which seems a bit hard for the season of bonfires,
traditions and looking forward to Christmas.
I do think, though, that many schools miss a topical trick
or two in November. Halloween on 31 October dominates
the start of the month and many schools are full of American
style carved pumpkins, cut out spiders and cheerful
witchery. It’s become commercially huge in recent years.
I think we should also teach children that Halloween means
the eve of All Hallows’ Day which is another name for All
Saints’ Day. It’s known as the Day of the Dead throughout
continental Europe and taken very seriously with cemetery
visits to remember deceased relations and so on. In Italy, France
and some other countries All Saints’ Day is a public holiday.
Yes it’s fine to have fun with blackened teeth
and spooky Halloween hats but let’s also make
children aware of the origins of it all.
And what about Guy Fawkes? Yes there will be firework
parties on 5 November but do we actually talk seriously
to children about what probably remains the greatest
foiled terrorist plot in our history? The effect of the
1605 Gunpowder Plot stretches right into the present
day – and until the mid 19th century it was compulsory
for communities to celebrate the thwarting of it.
What an opportunity to get children to think about
the tensions between protestant Britain (yes we’d sort of
been united with Scotland for four years by 1605) and
the Catholics who wanted something quite different.
Parallels with some of what is happening today?
There are also lessons about justice in the Gunpowder
Plot story. Guy Fawkes, who has gone down in history
as the villain was the original ‘fall guy’. He wasn’t the
planner or leader. He was brutally tortured, though.
And while we’re on the subject of topical things to
do in November do we do enough to make children
aware of what we’re actually remembering on 11
November? Every child should read War Horse at the
very least. And some of the devastating poetry – shades
of Hughes’s drowned dog, perhaps, except that the
casualties in the mud, millions of them, were human.
History – taught properly – is about a great deal
more than covering set ‘topics’ and ticking boxes. Let’s
encourage children to think and question.
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139 surrey-homes.co.uk
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