It was inevitable that with the coronation of King Charles III would provoke a cry from those who would like to see the end of the British monarchy. To spark discussion of what advantages, disadvantages, and indifferences that a new king will bring. However, what is it about the country that portions of its own population despise so much that it wants it so much.
The trouble might come from the fact that a lot of people don’t know, because we were never really told in the first place.
Recently, I have been on a harmless binge of the charming South Korean World Friends videos, which are little more than conversations between people from various nations. Presumably, the primary audience is South Korean, and they get to learn about at least two countries at once as they watch the guests converse. I think they are somewhat warming in that there are criticisms of minor cultural tropes in the friendliest ways possible. There have been Buzzfeed videos that serve only to entertain, which are definitely far more obnoxious, confrontational and belittling, full of “how can you eat that?” and “how the hell is that pronounced?”. In the World Friends videos, the guests seem to help each other through – “remember how ‘-cester’ is pronounced ‘-ster’? How do you think this other place name is pronounced?”.
Even the comments underneath, are relatively mature. When an American guest was moderately critical of traditional British food (I feel like the show might have put the overly strong word “terrible” in his mouth), but that you could get great food from a plethora of different cultures here. Of course, as a Brit, I feel that I can think of a few exceptions (pasties and cream teas instantly spring to mind), but I’m inclined to agree. Most of our best-known traditional foods are fried, in much the same way as the foods often associated with the USA come in a greasy bun.
However, something else was mentioned in this clip which grabbed my attention – how Britain once had a huge empire. This is also addressed quite substantially by the same guest, who when discussing America’s alleged ignorance to the rest of the world, is quite surprised to learned that British guest Lauren hadn’t been taught what the Boston Tea Party. After all, it’s an incredibly important… wasn’t it? I don’t know, because I wasn’t taught it either. My knowledge of US history is next to zero. I had to watch Hamilton with subtitles to keep track of a true story.
Of course, we can’t cover all history with what time we have, but this was the timeline that we had covered, excluding ancient history and the origins of the country.
- The Tudors (1485-1603): This is a very accessible and easy period for children to study with its few monarchs, Shakespeare, Henry VIII’s six wives, Mary Rose (there were plenty of resources for this here, living in Portsmouth) and the Wars of the Roses. The 1500s is long enough ago to justify the horrendous ways of life and various atrocities committed at the time. Elizabeth I dies, and then…
- The Battle of Trafalgar (1805) and The Industrial Revolution: These are obviously of great significance, yet felt unusually tagged on. This is because not only were they taught at a young age and therefore without political significance, but as with the Mary Rose, living in Portsmouth made it in evitability – it is the home of HMS Victory, and the birthplace of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. I’m pretty sure we watched musical adaptations for this too.
- Black Slavery in the USA (1800s): Finally reaching into international territory, we discussed at length the horrors of the slave trade.
- Victorian Era (1837-1901): This was discussed quite early on at school, at an age where we didn’t discuss politics at all (6 or 7?), and it was more about the way of life, such as how what peasants used for toilet paper. We had a Victorian day where we came in in old-fashioned uniform and learned what they may have been taught. My teacher misguidedly pretended to threaten me with the cane because my handwriting was terrible, and made several children cry (myself included).
- World Wars I and II (1914-1945): Undoubtedly took up the majority of history classes discussing way of life when we were younger, moving onto politics, the Holocaust and individual events as we got older. Yet again, Portsmouth’s significance was discussed a lot. Spoiler alert: Nazi Germany was evil. UK was nice, and won.
- Cuban Missile Crisis (1962): With little going in the UK, it’s back over to the USA for a tussle with the evil USSR.
- Racism and Civil Rights movements in USA (1960s): The final units returned to the United States to discuss racism and the fight against it during the 1960s.
Notice anything missing? After the Tudors, begins a new age where the United Kingdom is perfect. There is no exploring and colonising. No subsequent genocides. There is no difficulty with America, or for that matter any foreign relations that Britain didn’t win. All discussion about slavery was in the context of the USA, and it was as though people simply teleported from Africa to America. All of a sudden, Portsmouth maritime history wasn’t so important. The closest we came to addressing our own faults in modern history was women’s suffrage.
This is definitely part of why there has been a lot of fuss as of late about how certain British figures who were involved in the slave trade have been championed, whether for other reasons or not (leading to recent changes of place names and tearing down of statues). For a country so good at self-deprecating humour, we are terrible at facing up to facts – many of our ancestors were horrid, at least by modern principles. As much as we mock the USA for its cartoonish, jingoistic national pride, UK education has been very good at brushing our faults under the table.
I want to say outright that this is not an accusation of propaganda, but more a curiosity, and I would be interested to know what the current curriculum is. For example, I know that when I left school, the religious studies unit on Islam was in Year 10, which meant that it was taught only to students who chose religious studies in their options, and that it has since been moved to an earlier year so that it is taught to all students. If anyone can tell me in the comments, please do.
There is no way to know whether anything was chosen or left with specific intention to influence us as children, because it is also important to acknowledge major events that took place abroad with what little time we have. For example, we are probably twenty years away from 9/11 being taught in history lessons in place of where I was taught about 1960s civil rights.
Still, I think that it’s astounding that the British took over the world (before losing most of it again), and we don’t seem to talk about it.
Nick Pollard's Industrial Doo-Wop Hyperpop Dungeon 
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