Remember that important line between fantasy and reality?

[richardthinks]

Changing countries exposes you to different ways of thinking. Ayup.

So I'm checking through my son's homework (he's in the equivalent to 4th grade) and they're learning about the Gauls. Because it's French history and geography, and Gauls == French. And this is what they learn:

Gaul society was composed of Warriors, Druids, and Ordinary Men.
Warriors

Comments

[whswhs]

That sociology of the ancient Gauls seems to come straight from Georges Dumézil's tripartite ideology account of Indo-European myth, with its gods of cosmic order and law, its redheaded thunderbolt-wielding gods of battle, and its gods of the people. It hadn't occurred to me that Dumézil's model might simply reflect French elementary education's treatment of history.

[richardthinks]

Dumezil published that model in 1929, which is pretty much the sort of delay I expect between academia and primary school education, and his model remains pretty much uncontroversial, so it's perfect fodder. No, the presence of the tripartite model itself doesn't surprise me: it's more the emphasis with which it's imparted. You can play a fighter or a druid. Or I guess an ordinary man if you want, but they just pay taxes.

Regarding academic lag I had a similar thought during the 4th Indiana Jones film, where Indy tells a student to read Gordon Childe (the father of Marxist archaeology and a pro-Soviet speaker) at the height of McCarthyism and while he's being chased by Soviet agents. Is this a hat-tip to the archaeologists in the audience, that Indy retains his independence of thought in the middle of hysteria? Probably not, no. 60 years down the line, GC's name stands proud against the rush of events - he's probably the only archaeologist the writer could name off-hand.

[jordan179]

You'll find the same description of Gallic society in most books about the Gauls. Like it or not, Caesar is one of our primary sources. And the old Indo-European tripartite social system was quite real, with traces of it being found in the early history of most Indo-European descended countries. So I don't know why this bothers you.

Of course the reality must have been more complex, but unfortunately very little of this greater complexity survived, because the Gauls didn't write down much, and only a few outside observers such as Caesar did write down much about their society. We have archaeological remains, but there's a limit as to how much you can deduce about the fine details of a vanished society from such remains.

The literary sources from other Celtic societies (we don't have any from the Gauls themselves) seem to confirm Caesar, when one remembers that these sources were from Christian Celtic societies (in fact, usually from actual monks) and that the Christian Church had displaced the Druids.

[richardthinks]

Sure, there's the problem of sources, and Caesar had his concerns, which are reflected in his data collection, and Gauls might even have recognised themselves in the model, even without Caesar's heavy military filter. That's not what bothers me, or leads me to call it fantasy. Maybe I haven't got the spirit of the homework page across. It really was "imagine the warrior! Here he is in his equipment. Imagine the druid! Here's his ritual schedule. Oh yeah and people paid taxes." The page really wouldn't be out of place in a DnD supplement - you can play a fighter or a druid, here's what you need to know about them. And there are Normal Men but we have nothing to say about them.

It's not quite on a par with Marvin Trachtenberg writing "ancient civilisations mostly built their buildings out of stone" because its sin is omission rather than commission, but it is clearly, actively misleading. Yes, we may not know all that much about normal folks, but we can do better than dismiss them as unimportant.

[richardthinks]

...the other thing is that this is nationalist history. The French are being told who they are. And that is a bit of a hot-button issue with me. They were Gauls = fighters and druids! Zawesome. And then they were Romans = fighters and civil engineers! And all this stuff helps shape a world-view. Leaving aside all other concerns for a moment, I would like to have a look through the whole curriculum and see if there's a single illustration of a woman anywhere.

[cdk]

Leaving aside all other concerns for a moment, I would like to have a look through the whole curriculum and see if there's a single illustration of a woman anywhere.

Yeah, that definitely struck me in the original post.

[cdk]

I would probably be just as troubled by the depiction of Colonial and Revolutionary folks in a US school.

I grew up in Texas, so learning about indigenous peoples, from the Iroquois to the Maya, was a huge part of my elementary school education. At one point in 4th grade I was tasked with building a model of an Iroquois longhouse; other students built tipis and pueblos. And of course for every unit of U.S. History we had, we had to have a separate unit of Texas History. (I'm told that other states are not like this.) So we spent a LOT of time learning about Davy Crockett's body being found surrounded by 16 Mexican corpses.

[richardthinks]

Nice. So there are good Americans and bad Americans? Or maybe Mexicans aren't Americans?

[cdk]

I do my best to not use "Americans" because it's so confusingly ambiguous; in this case Crockett would be a United Statesian insurgent fomenting rebellion in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. But from the elementary school perspective, he was a Texan hero who fought for independence from the villainous Santa Anna.

The "surrounded by 16 Mexican corpses" thing is a quote attributed to a survivor of the battle at the Alamo who was challenging rumors that Crockett surrendered and was executed.

[whswhs]

I kind of like the Mexican Spanish adjective estadounidense. Too long for casual use in English, though. And "United Statesian" is potentially ambiguous; there have been other "United States," notably including Brazil for a long time.

Besides, if you say "American," people all over the world will take you to mean someone from the USA, just as if you say "doctor" anyone in American will assume you're talking about an MD and not a DDS, JD, or PhD.

[st_rev]

Are they learning "history" from D&D, or Asterix?

[richardthinks]

Chapeau! I haven't seen any references to Magic Potion yet, but perhaps if we were in Armorique rather than the Ile de France?

[whswhs]

Armorique = Bretagne, n'est-ce pas? Not properly part of France or French history; they were only officially incorporated into France with the Revolution, and they fought a sustained guerrilla war against it. Victor Hugo even wrote a novel about it, Quatre-Vingts-Treize.

[richardthinks]

Ah, but national history need observe no such niceties. The Bretons might even to this day not quite consider themselves French, but the French most definitely claim any and every scrap of Breton history, and most especially pseudo-history like Asterix. You'll be saying the English should give back Merlin or Robert the Bruce or Trelawney, next, or that the Spanish shouldn't claim the Alhambra as a national treasure.

[chickenfeet2003]

But were the Gauls a Good Thing? They weren't British and therefore clearly were not Memorable unlike the Ancient Britons who painted themselves with woad and stopped fighting for tea at five o'clock thus allowing the unsporting Romans, who did not stop for tea, to defeat them.

[richardthinks]

Also, no queens like Boadicea. Truly, the Brits have always been an advanced bunch. And it's just like those unreliable Italians to fight through tea time.