Posted on 11/04/2010 3:02:22 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
(Television series proposal, submitted to History Channel, Discovery Channel, A&E, Learning Channel, Disney, et al, by Word-Wise Productions.)
Marketing context: American public education has been dumbed down, neutered, rendered dull and boring. Little is taught. One thing especially is not taught. History. There is thus an unfed hunger for History real, raw, and revelatory.
Everything that makes children and adults love History has been eliminated from History. Starting in the 1920s, progressive educators used a gimmick called Social Studies to constrict the teaching of History. Less was taught, and taught in a less interesting way. Throughout the 20th century History was made more politically correct, more timid, bloodless, and unfocused, more a vehicle for social engineering, more wimpy. Soon History had all the intellectual excitement of an infomercial for a new vegetable slicer.
At this point, we all need to be reminded of what History was always about for many thousands of years: Quests. Victories. Defeats. Excellence. Death. Egos. Genius. Battles. Greatness. Insanity. Business. Law. Art. Family. Government. Luck. Military campaigns. Heroes. Disease. Monuments. Crime. Tragedies. Plots. Romance. Religion. Engineering feats. Politics. Duty. Sacrifice. Honor. Human behavior both ordinary and under pressure. Great personalities. Inventions. Glory. Suicide. Philosophy.
We all delight in extremes and superlatives. We love a great story. History is millions of good stories. The Roman Empire, with 10 centuries of history, has a million stories all its own.
[[Who knows, somebody might actually want to produce this series. But the main impetus was to dramatize the pathetic way that history is taught. Rest is on AmericanChronicle with a fine graphic of Crassus, said to be one of the richest men in all of History.]]
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(Excerpt) Read more at americanchronicle.com ...
And I am sure that the men (and many women!) of our own old West did the same concerning horses.
A really good series on the real old West of America would be welcome. Today, most of what I know about the authentic men and women and events of the period of settlement (c. 1820 - 1880) comes from 'fiction' writers like Louis L'Amore and Don Coldsmith. They know history and their works should properly be categorized as 'historical fiction'.
All history buffs should read The Walking Drum by Louis L'Amore!
“This isn’t about the HBO series “Rome”, which is NOT a kid-safe program BTW.”
Partly because the Romans themselves weren’t kid-safe. To-ga! To-ga! To-ga!
Same here. It portrayed Julius Caesar in a pretty favorable light, but they had Augustus as a real snake. I was disappointed that it only ran 2 seasons.
Period pieces with large casts are enormously expensive. The locations, the sets and costumes, a huge cast having to be paid for a year but filming for only six months. “Rome” and “Deadwood” ended because they cost too much.
That’s why the proposal embraces the concept of cannibalizing from all previous movies.
:’D
It’s not over until we say it is. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
Instead of History, there’s “Historiography”.
Oooh, is that good to know! I’ve got the DVD set (the old one, not the remastered reissue of a few years ago), but that does me no good at work, does it? ;’)
So this is history stripping out the “politically correct” about Rome? What does it change? Is it Carlylean “Great Men made history”? Or something else?
I’ve always been wary of the Carlyle/Spencer approach. Social demands may be articulated by the Great Men - but do they create them, or speak of stirrings already in the populace? Do they bring Enlightenment to the benighted masses, or Interpretation? Do the masses even matter?
The Great Man theory is refuted by the Tea Party’s success, a movement which has no one speaker.
Does this mean that the teacher empowered you to make your own decisions, even as he made no attempt to disguise his own.
My most instructive college courses were with guys *just like that.* Every teacher has biases; good for them for being upfront about them. It makes it so much easier to refute them! ]
The fact that they are teaching *facts,* like the way the Executive Branch works, means that they are really *teaching,* instead of preaching. It’s even better when they give you the tools and tell you, ‘Go see what you can dig up out of history, then come back and be prepared to defend your approach!”
That led to long, happy hours in the archi9ves, reading about the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in long-out-of-print newspapers.
He made no attempt to hide his bias, but I think the empowering part was he taught us a lot of truisms. Perhaps it was the first course I remember being taught in an adult manner.
I still remember one question he had - “How long is a treaty good for?” We went around the room for a long time on that one. Finally he told the the answer - “Until someone breaks it!”
Perhaps his teaching methods were the *result* of his political philosophy, instead of *in spite of* it.
There was/is a huge group of vaguely Marxist teachers who believed in “empowering” the masses. They tried to do it in two ways. One was “consciousness raising” - that was probably the political opinions you heard but rejected out of hand.
But the other was through providing the students tools. In History and Poli Sci, they’d teach basic knowledge of the government for instance, or how bills get passed. In the English Department, there was a lot of teaching of the rules of grammar. Even Rhetoric was seen as empowering - it teaches you to spot specious arguments. I guess they figured that people with raised consciousnesses would go out and use the tools “progressively.”
Your teacher sounds like he fell into that category. I personally think that it’s a lot more powerful to help students achieve mastery of tools, or of knowledge of systems, than to just fill them with pre-digested opinions to regurgitate, whether from the Left OR Right. Critical thinking skills are essential.
I wouldn't hold out much hope for the History Channel, though. They don't do much history any more. :-((
Honestly, what i’m seeing cuts across all these theories. I’m seeing entertainment. History made human, and like what we now call news.
Thanks for the recommendation....I spend about a week or so on Rome out of an 18-week course.
I usually assume that people who talk like this have never attended a college history class.
/college history teacher here
/for going on ten years
Actually, Rome has ended permanently because the sets were destroyed in a fire.
I’m a college teacher and a fan of the series and the new made me sad.
I have a PhD in history from a “prestigious” university and I thought the series was terrific. I wish we could have gone on and watched Augustus/Octavian manipulate his way through a few crises post-Triumverate.
It was particularly up to date in such matters as the revolving file system used for tactical combat in the early Imperial legions. THAT’s someone doing their research...
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