Huguenot and other research distractions

[iluleah]

I would agree with regards to history taught at school, I hated history in school and couldn't 'connect' at all to it, it was just a random list of names, dates, places back then, so when I 'found' family history it was such a learning curve and history came to life........ so later on when I trained as a teacher it seemed very logical to me to teach very creatively.

I have worked in schools, colleges and universities but eventually found my love and passion in community education often teaching young people failing to attend school for one reason or another and those who had left school and with no motivation and it is really great to see the 'Ah Ah' moment when these young people get it, understand for the first time, become interested and motivated, pass exams and go onto college/university I feel so proud of them and much of that was achieved by including in classes family research, dog training, going shopping, cooking/baking so they connect and learn practical skills that enable reading, writing, weighing, measuring, research, time management, team work, problem solving and communication skills and so much more.

[saw119]

I think research and social history is a disease for me, I just can't help myself. I'm back researching a wildly tenuous family related by marriage way down the line simply because they lived in a truly fascinating place and period (east end moving up to west end of London in the late 1700's thru mid Victorian). I suppose you can please yourself what you research but I like to have at least a tenuous connection I suppose.

[Maiden Stone]

History was my favourite and best school subject. Family history has brought many of the topics I studied "home". 
"Life & Times" of my ancestors I wish I'd known about in my schooldays include:
1) A Chartist & trades unionist whose pals were imprisoned under anti-trade union Combination law. My ancestor's words and actions were reported in prosecution testimony in 2 trials and in local newspaper. Among the many incidents was a riot in which people were shot by militia. A member of another family line, married to a doctor, was living at the scene of the riot.
2) Aforementioned doctor's wife belonged to a long-established English Catholic family whose members appeared regularly in lists of recusants / Papists from 17th-late 18th centuries. Following the Catholic Relief Acts, then Catholic Emancipation, they were able to keep more of the money they made and take a full part in society. They are on voters' lists from 1832, year of Great Reform Act. One became a priest, rising high in the re-established Catholic hierarchy and founding several churches in Southern England, commissioning a member of the Pugin family of architects.
3) A militia captain in Napoleonic War who was an amateur artist, writer & antiquarian. A fellow officer became a scholar & co-founder of an antiquarian society. Some of their correspondence was published.
4) Jacobite army marched through one ancestor's town. Men from the town attacked soldiers of the defeated army on the return journey.
5) Trade followed by subsequent generations of ancestor in 4) benefitted from canals then railway.
6) Members of all these families moved to the same rapidly growing industrial town. Infant mortality shot up and life expectancy of adults reduced. There was also a marked increase in illegitimacy in one family.
7) Some ag. labs were also handloom weavers; their offspring found work in mills in town, some dying in the workhouse.
I've explored all these byways and learned lots. It adds characters to names from 200 years ago.
I'm a magpie where information is concerned.

[andrewalston]

I have to agree about the History we were taught at school being boring. I think that the main problem was that there was no relevance to our lives. Lots of thing done by people we'd never heard of, in places a long way off, a long time ago. It did not help that I come from the north of England, and the syllabus was devised by people who never left the capital. Hugely important subjects were ignored because of their London-centric view. There were, apparently, a lot of marks to be had in the exam from knowing The Causes Of The French Revolution, but none for knowing anything about the Industrial Revolution.

You need something to get children hooked. "This happened here", "a chap from just up the road became famous".

A really good subject to get children interested would be the English Civil War (the subject of a single 45-minute lesson), which affected all parts of the country. There were half a dozen battles and sieges within the catchment area of the school I went to.

All that said, I was recently distracted back to that interminable period when we forced to learn about The Peninsular War. I came across a discharge certificate from 1821 of a soldier who was worn out through service. After explaining that he had been wounded by a musquet ball at Waterloo, it told me that he had volunteered for the Forlorn Hope at San Sebastian. I just had to read up on the battles (and the terminology). After marching around Europe for over a decade, it's not surprising he was worn out!

[pharmaT]

I have to agree about the History we were taught at school being boring. I think that the main problem was that there was no relevance to our lives. Lots of thing done by people we'd never heard of, in places a long way off, a long time ago. It did not help that I come from the north of England, and the syllabus was devised by people who never left the capital. Hugely important subjects were ignored because of their London-centric view. There were, apparently, a lot of marks to be had in the exam from knowing The Causes Of The French Revolution, but none for knowing anything about the Industrial Revolution.

You need something to get children hooked. "This happened here", "a chap from just up the road became famous".

A really good subject to get children interested would be the English Civil War (the subject of a single 45-minute lesson), which affected all parts of the country. There were half a dozen battles and sieges within the catchment area of the school I went to.

All that said, I was recently distracted back to that interminable period when we forced to learn about The Peninsular War. I came across a discharge certificate from 1821 of a soldier who was worn out through service. After explaining that he had been wounded by a musquet ball at Waterloo, it told me that he had volunteered for the Forlorn Hope at San Sebastian. I just had to read up on the battles (and the terminology). After marching around Europe for over a decade, it's not surprising he was worn out!

When I was at Primary school my teachers were very good at linking history to local things we did history of school, village, county and so on working outwards.  Even when we did wider historical events it was linked for example Battle of Stirling Bridge the local landowner had been granted his land for hi actions during the battle, when I was at school the estate was still owned by the same family, WW2 we leaerned how our own school had taken on evacuee children, visited the war memorial and found out about those named on it.

When my older daughter did WW2 at school they had to write about someone from their familys experience of war although it did cause touble when my daughter's work was failed and she was called a liar in frnt of the whole class.  i ended up taking all the proof into school as proof.

[JanPennington]

It is sad that your daughter was not believed pharmaT. 
Here in Australia on ANZAC Day relatives of veterans are allowed to march in the parades but they wear the medals on the other side and some women, who have been marching, have been accused of wearing their dead relatives medals on the wrong side  and people will not believe that have earned the medals themselves serving in recent conflicts. 
Jan