Prequel Problems: Robert Jordan’s “New Spring”

[FriendlyGhost]

[continuing down the off-topic tangent, just because it's interesting...]

I suspect that this sort of curriculum layout problem is a major, secret reason for the poor performance of UK pupils at learning languages for decades.

I agree. It took my parents going to see the rector (headmaster) for me to be able to study German along with my other more scientific subjects (Maths, Chemistry and Physics - and English because it was mandatory). The fact that a lot of chemistry books from the early 20th century were written in German was what swayed it apparently, the argument being that German might come in useful to me when studying chemistry at university - which it never did, ironically, though Polish would have been extremely handy, given what I ended up doing for my dissertation!

Certainly English schools were very Anglocentric and hardly noticed the existence or history, let alone culture, of the 'Celtic' nations , which is probably a major reason for the long-running Anglocentric attitude of the English/ London governing elites.

There does seem to be a pervading view that British history is just English history with a couple of footnotes. For example, one of my major bug-bears is the blind assumption that 'Tudor' history is relevant to the entire UK and relegating 'Stuart' history to some also-rans who followed them, when in fact the Stewarts were the longest-reigning royal house in UK history, having been around for over a century by the time the Tudors came on the scene (1371 vs 1485) and then surviving them by a century as well (1707 vs 1603).

History was all post-1066

That's another bug-bear of mine. Even leaving aside that 1066 primarily affected England, not the other nations of the UK (at least directly - of course there were secondary effects, sometimes very major ones!), so that history for those nations shouldn't be 'centred' on that date...like I say, leaving that aside, there are whole generations of students who don't know, for example, that the king called Edward I was actually the third King Edward of England or even that England didn't magically spring into being when the Romans left!

Lest anyone thinks I'm casting aspersions purely at history teaching in England, it wasn't much better in Scotland when I was a child (70s in my case). If the only history I'd ever learned were that formally taught in school, I'd have come away with the impression that the world wars immediately followed the industrial revolution , which came just after the vikings, who were immediately after the Romans , who appeared just after the Stone Age . Luckily my parents made sure I learned a lot more!

 

[Thande]

I agree. It took my parents going to see the rector (headmaster) for me to be able to study German along with my other more scientific subjects (Maths, Chemistry and Physics - and English because it was mandatory). The fact that a lot of chemistry books from the early 20th century were written in German was what swayed it apparently, the argument being that German might come in useful to me when studying chemistry at university - which it never did, ironically, though Polish would have been extremely handy, given what I ended up doing for my dissertation!

There's a few terms that are still useful (such as gerade and ungerade) and Angewandte Chemie remains very important, but yeah. I did my PhD on molecules that were first created in Germany in the 1930s (er) and I never actually read the original German paper that was cited, think I can admit that now.

Otherwise, we all pile on about English history teaching, my main complaint being the huge gap at my secondary school between the Civil War and the late Victorian industrial period. That's not quite true - I do remember us doing the Peterloo Massacre, and our response being basically "this is boring, you know it says here it was named after the Battle of Waterloo, whatever that is, that sounds more interesting, can't we do that instead?" (See introduction to the first Look to the West book for more rants of this type).

 

[Redolegna]

Civil War and the late Victorian industrial period.

but those are contemporary

 

[Makemakean]

I agree. It took my parents going to see the rector (headmaster) for me to be able to study German along with my other more scientific subjects (Maths, Chemistry and Physics - and English because it was mandatory). The fact that a lot of chemistry books from the early 20th century were written in German was what swayed it apparently, the argument being that German might come in useful to me when studying chemistry at university - which it never did, ironically, though Polish would have been extremely handy, given what I ended up doing for my dissertation!

@Thande makes it a point early on in Look to the West that because of Linnaeus, many foreign natural philosophers learn Swedish in that timeline, and consequently, that means that Scheele gets historical recognition in this timeline that he didn't get in OTL.

I only actually learned years after having read it that Scheele, although he lived in Sweden for most of his professional life, fundamentally being a Pomeranian German, apparently spoke very poor Swedish, preferring to speak German in private, and he actually had to rely quite a lot on his native Swedish-speaking friends and colleagues to help him put together his manuscripts for publication.

 

[Thande]

but those are contemporary

Don't make me come over there and hurt you.

 

[OHC]

I have mentioned on this site before that I loved this series as a teenager, despite fully recognizing all the silliness you point out (and I still kind of do - I've been listening to it on audiobook during my commutes this year as a bit of nostalgic relief). That said, I remember reading New Spring and being disappointed by the lack of oomph - and then immediately thinking "Well what did I expect, I know how it all turns out."

Perfect illustration of the way prequels can be cautious to the point of timewasting irrelevance.