KING ROBERT THE BRUCE A "FEUDAL BULLY."

[Currie]

KING ROBERT THE BRUCE A "FEUDAL BULLY."

M. T. Johnston Attacks Scots History Teaching.

"APPALLING NONSENSE" TOLD TO CHILDREN.

A remarkable attack on the present methods of teaching history in Scottish schools was made by Mr Thomas Johnston, Under Secretary of State for Scotland, at the second day's sitting at Greenock of the fifty-third annual congress of the Educational Institute of Scotland.

Teachers Not Free Agents.

Mr Johnston's remarks were provocative of a good deal of discussion, Women delegates contending that teachers were not free agents in the matter of teaching history. They had to bow to the Education Department.

Historians Like Commercial Travellers.

(From Our Own Representative.)
GREENOCK, Friday.

The feature of to-day's proceedings at the fifty-third annual congress of the Educational Institute of Scotland was the attack made by Mr Thomas Johnston, Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, on the system of history teaching in the schools.

Following Mr Johnston's address, the Congress sat in private to discuss the problems that will follow the raising of the school leaving age. A discussion on the situation was introduced by Mr D. M. Cowan, Parliamentary Secretary, Educational Institute of Scotland.

The Congress concluded with an address by Mr Ian D. Stewart, H.M. sub-inspector, on the preservation of art in technical courses.

Miss Agnes B. Muir, vice-president of the Institute, was in the chair to-day, and she introduced Mr Johnston as one who was eminently fitted to address them on the teaching of history.

Repellent Chronology.

Some twenty-five years have passed, said Mr Johnston, since a few of us battered our heads against a system of inoculating our children with a catalogue of useless knowledge, of useless and more or less mythical dates of the births and doings and deaths of useless people. the which was at that time called "history.”

Catalogues of battles, when Salamanca was fought, and who was Henry the VIII's fourth and fifth wives in proper chronological order, and when Lord Liverpool took office, and when Bolingbroke demitted it, and how William the Sailor King loved his people, and when Maria Theresa ascended the Austrian throne, and all the rest of it. A most amazing collation of repellent chronology—and as we afterwards learned, not all of it accurate—from which we got no understanding of or reverence for the footfalls of the past, no analysis or interpretation of the activities of our ancestors likely to arouse the curiosity or the interest of a single child. All this was solemnly taught in the schools as history.

It really taught us nothing, this drum and trumpet recital and date memory exercise. It was, in the deepest and fullest sense of the term, an educational imposture.

Mental Paralysis.

Yet twenty-five years ago we could not shake it. It ran riot in almost every school, and only a few strong-minded adults here and there wriggled themselves free from the mental paralysis of the system and set themselves to explain and expound the realities of the past, from which the realities of the present had grown.

Then twenty years ago we had a memorandum on the Study of History in Scottish schools, published by the Scots Educational Department. The writer of that memorandum regarded as of fundamental importance in the teaching of history a development of the time sense.

The time relations of the great events were to be represented spatially; charts were' to be constructed; there were, of course, to be picturesque details in the presentation, but the time relation was the thing of supreme importance.

Bannockburn.

Thus the great aim in studying the Battle of Bannockburn, so the writer of the memorandum assured us, was “to to assign the battle its place on the chart.” And the teacher was to point out “that the kind of warfare implied came to an end with the use of gunpowder, and that this fact of itself indicates that the battle must have been fought before a certain period marked upon the chart.”

To most of us this search for datal relationship, while perhaps useful enough as a mental exercise, had no bearing whatever upon the historical essentials.

Bannockburn is interesting not at all because it was fought before gunpowder was invented, but because it marked a certain dramatic clash in the feudal-national development of our country; and because it was won by the small folk and the pouer-aille (literally, poor folk) from the lands or Moray led by one Alexander Pilche, a burgess from Inverness.

Robert the Bruce was a feudal bully, and the story of Bruce and the spider an invention. Mr Johnston pointed out that in the winter of 1306-7 Bruce was spending his time, not in semi-starvation watching spiders in an island cave, but amid the rude comforts obtainable at the court of the Norwegian King.

Method All Wrong.

The Education Department, proceeded Mr Johnston, had got the purpose of history teaching, to say nothing of the method of history teaching, all wrong; and there was no surprise when, in the autumn of 1921 the Council of the Historical Association of Scotland sent out a questionnaire on the position of history in the secondary, higher grade, and continuation classes, it received replies which indicated that history as a subject was among the “also rans” in our educational policy. “Make it interesting," cried one head-master; “a great deal of the present teaching of history is mere weariness to the pupil”; while another pled with justification that “there ought to be a great deal more social and economic history and history of the influences that made for civilisation.”

Few Specialist Teachers.

In 1921 there were in all Scotland only eleven schools employing a specialist teacher in history. The other schools supplied history as a by-product, along with singing, gymnastics, and beginner's French, with teachers whose educational qualifications were the same for all subjects. How many specialist teachers there are now I know not, although if I may judge by the text-books still in use in our schools there cannot surely be many.

The other day I asked the Education Department to get me a collection of the history books in use in the public schools of Scotland; and there in these volumes I find still being hawked as history a jumble of prejudices and irrelevancies, and a useless chronology of selected parasitic stocks.

Like Commercial Travellers.

Each ruling house in turn had its bards who chanted its glories and prowess, bards who were as reliable historians as their present-day successors, the commercial travellers who disparage rival firms and recite the virtues of their own, for a more or less assured bite and sup. (Laughter.)

But the history of the people, the history of the nameless, numberless millions who strove and toiled, loved and died, the rank and file who built and wove and killed and starved, and sweated and froze in the outer dark—of them, our ancestors, little is known.

No bards sang them. The Historiographer Royal passes them by, for the rich pay the Historiographer's salary.

The schoolmaster who fabricates for a publisher the boiled down romantic nonsense that he is pleased to term a school history book would as soon think of interpolating a truthful account of the Highland clearances, or of the early factory hells, of the Lanarkshire Industrial massacres and robberies, as his publisher would be to pay for it, or any self-regarding Education Executive Officer to scatter it in his schools.

Fable and Myth.

But why should our children not be told the story of the slavery in Scotland as depicted in the charter chests and old Church estate rolls, for example in the Manuscript Cartulary of Dunfermline in the Advocates Library.

Why should they not be told that the colliers and salt pan workers until little over a century ago were serfs bought and sold with the properties upon which they toiled? And why should our children not be told that the colliers were freed in the cause of lower wages?

We are told nothing of the Slavery in our school history books. Instead we have great wealth of fable and myth, invented chronologies that carry royal households back to the Pharaohs, swallowed wholesale and retail, even by writers like George Buchanan, and bettered only by some the bard of the Highland clans who carried their chief's family Bible record back to Noah's Ark.

"Justifying His Salary."

From Lord Hailes' day, however, the more fantastic royal family myths have been discarded. Our historians can start at Malcolm Canmore without fear of making the King a Parvenu or arrivist. Since the Union of the Crowns the King's Majesty has a long English pedigree as well as a Scots one, upon which to justify his salary. (Laughter.)

Our feudal chapters begin with Archdeacon Barbour's “The Brus.” Max Nordau, had he known of it, would have classified Barbour's effort as mongrel poetry. It places at Bannockburn Brus the grandfather who first quarrelled with the English King, although in fact it was Bruce, the grandson, who was there.

For Mr Hill Burton, continued Mr Johnston, the common folk barely exist. Mr Law Mathison, greatly daring, rakes together suppressed records of the political struggles at the beginning of the nineteenth century. But no Scottish History Society ventures upon a history of the rise of industrialism, the factory hells, with the orphan children of the soldiers slain in the Napoleonic Wars, the slave colliers who but over a century ago were bound for life to a pit, and who a generation since were trucked to the master's “store” where they paid dearly for their purchases; nor how the truck system fell and made the Co-operative Store possible, nor upon the clearances—Highland and Lowland—the plunder of our burghal common good funds and lands by the merchant and petty laird class, the struggles for the franchise and the charter.

These things were the realities of history explaining for us the slums of our cities, the rickets, the tuberculosis, the death rates, and the poverty of mind and body of the masses.

Realities of History.

The modern school history primer still avoided as a crime against good historical society manners any unseemly or injudicious reference to the condition of the masses. We still are surfeited with thinly disguised glorifications of hereditary ruling classes over whom a glamour, half tender, half reverential, has been cast.

I plead on the contrary that our children should he told about the Factory Acts, and the Truck Acts, and the sanitation laws, and how we have conquered leprosy and typhus and small-pox.

Surely the witchcraft burnings and the great clearances and emigrations, which so largely contributed to the making of the British Commonwealth of Nations, are important facts enough in history to warrant mention.

I would even dare to ask that Simpson, Lister, and Raeburn and Kelvin and Watt and MacAdam should be names held up to honour in precedence of dull generals and needle-witted politicians.

Appeal to E.I.S.

In our school history books, concluded the speaker, the vital records are suppressed, while trivialities of no importance and serving no purpose beyond the glorification of some vested interest or institution are elevated and magnified before our children.

It is for the members of the Educational Institute of Scotland, as time and occasion offers, so to exert their influence that the great drama of the past shall he adequately unfolded to our children, and they be taught of their place in the chain and of the heritage of opportunity which the struggles of brave men and women have handed down to our generation.

Lastly, there is the inspiration of a social service to our nation and to humanity, which can only come rationally and effectively with a proper understanding of the facts of the past.

Hint to Mr Johnston.

A Dumfries delegate, Miss Service, pointed out, amid applause, that teachers, although having tendencies to teach along the lines suggested by Mr Johnston, were not free agents in the matter.

After all, added Miss Service, amid laughter, the speaker is a member of Parliament, and is connected with the Education Department. It is up to him therefore to try and change the system which they at present lay down.

A fearless critic of examination papers that are set in history was found in Miss Robertson, High School, Glasgow. We do not know who the person is who sets these appalling examination papers, she said, and I suggest that his name be attached to them. Then, when I want to deliver a blow it will not be at the empty air, but at a solid body. (Laughter.)

Replying to the discussion, Mr Johnston said he would go further than Miss Robertson. Instead of having anonymous history books in the schools, they ought to have attached to them the names and the qualifications of the persons writing them, so that at any rate they would be responsible to the public for the appalling nonsense they wrote.

New Problems.

At the private session, Mr D. M. Cowan, as indicated, introduced a discussion on the school leaving age.

The Congress considered the undoubted difficulties in the matter of accommodation, equipment, and staffing, and expressed its willingness to help in every way possible in the solution of these.

It was felt that Authorities would have excuse for delay, if the Government did not proceed at en early date to the passing of the English Bill into law. The naming of the appointed day in Scotland depended upon the English legislation.

Various problems in connection with exemptions from school attendance and maintenance grants were also under review.

Art in Industry.

A bright feature of the afternoon session was the musical illustrations by a choir of Greenock pupils of an address entitled "The Origin and History of the Carol," delivered by Mr Geoffrey Shaw.

In the course of his address, Mr Stewart made a plea for the introduction of art into both secondary and commercial courses. There were great opportunities nowadays for the pupil with the artistic mind. He did not mean art in what he might call its highest aspect; what he emphasised was that in industry hitherto unexplored avenues were open for the craftsman with the artistic sense.

----------------------------------------------------------


The above article is from the Aberdeen Press and Journal, Saturday, December 28, 1929.

It appears that Mr Johnston was a bit of a Leftie. His comments about Bruce and everything else raised the ire of those of a more conservative bent and others. Here's his Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Johns ... olitician)

Perhaps the “fearless critic of examination papers ”'Miss Robertson, High School, Glasgow” referred to late in the Press and Journal article was the “formidable lady with a grey bun” at the same school in 1940 referred to in this book. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=m8 ... 22&f=false (Selective Memory: An Autobiography, Katharine Whitehorn, Hachette UK, 2 Jun 2011)

The news spread around the world but seems to have been forgotten until now.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22robe ... l+bully%22

I wonder what Mr Johnston would think of the assorted Robert the Bruce movies of recent times. I'm waiting for the Musical.

I'll post a number of responses to this article if anyone is interested.


Alan

[SarahND]

I'll post a number of responses to this article if anyone is interested.

Fascinating, Alan. Please do!

[Currie]

Thanks Sarah,

Here are a few selected extracts.


The Manchester Guardian, December 28, 1929.

Having disposed of the spider, Mr. Johnston proceeds to demolish the King himself. Bruce, on his view, was no more than a "feudal bully" who with others of his sort bulks far too largely in the pages of histories that would more properly concern themselves with the lives of those humbler folk who made possible the triumphs of their overlords.

There is some salutary sense in this, for, despite the devoted romanticism of Blind Harry and Barbour, Bruce falls far short of being the whole-souled patriot from whom lips might have come the stirring lines that Burns attributes to them. It was much lees a love of Scotland than a combination of self-interest and accident that led him to espouse the Scottish cause. But in a world wholly run by "feudal bullies" Bruce, to give him his due, cut a not ungallant figure. His statesmanship was as sound as his strategy and served to rally the country from the depths of disorder and despair. He could be generous to the vanquished and appreciative of the qualities of a great foe.

Finally, and for this if for nothing else Mr. Johnston might surely temper the wind of criticism, he summoned the first Scottish Parliament in which, besides the other "feudal bullies” and the clergy, the burghs were represented. That step may fairly be said to have set going among the Scottish people the ferment of interest in polities that has its bright efflorescence to-day in the presence of the Clydesiders at Westminster. In view of that admirable contribution to the national life, will not Mr Johnston reconsider the case and even perhaps restore to the monarch his spider.



The Scotsman (Edinburgh) 03 January 1930.

Mr Johnston bemoans the fact that our historians do not give us the history of the toiling masses throughout the ages. Now, that is distinctly unfair, because it is absolutely impossible to recover the names or give a complete list of the inhabitants of any Parish in Scotland. . There are no hearth tax rolls for Scotland, as in England. Such rent rolls as we possess contain only the names of the principal tenants. People appear in kirk-session records whose names are not found in parish registers, rentals, or seisins, &c. The great mass of the people do not appear on record at all, and it can only be said of them “they were born, lived, and died.”

Historians might be able to throw a flood of light on their social condition if Mr Johnston caused an inquiry to be made as to the disappearance of the “Poll Tax Rolls for Scotland, 1695,”and these rolls were recovered. These rolls contain the names of people of all grades, their wages, incomes, names of their wives and children, and constitute the most complete lists of inhabitants in town and country.



The Evening Telegraph and Post, (Dundee), Wednesday, January 08, 1930.

Since Mr Tom Johnston discovered the fact that Robert the Bruce was a feudal bully, those folk who have traced their family back to that king now stop short at a generation later.



Daily Mail (Hull, England), Thursday, January 16, 1930.

"IT'S DOGGED THAT DOES IT."
Who is Mr Thomas Johnston? I don't mind telling him to his face that I do not like him. He is a poor Scot, if he be a Scot. This is his "Saying of the week”--”Robert the Bruce was a feudal bully, and the story of Bruce and the spider is an invention." Let me tell him that most of the Scots have been reared on that persevering spider. That is why they are the best pioneers, the best colonisers, and the salt of the earth! Ahem! Mr Johnston must be an envious Sassenach, that is my conclusion, and I advise him to turn his thoughts to Alfred, who could not properly toast a cake; or to the vain old Canute and his silly snobbish courtiers, who could not even think of a spider, or any other incentive to persevere. If Mr Johnston thinks he is going to rob Scotland of Bruce, or Bannockburn, or the story of the spider with impunity, he is vastly mistaken. Let the League of Nations take note that wars have been fought on less provocation.


Otago Daily Times, 18 January 1930

The tale of Bruce and the spider figured in our school-books. We lapped it all up like milk. There was a picture of the incident, the spider well to the fore, So was the moral pointed from generation to generation. Life is a battlefield. We may be hard pressed, almost down and out. Remember Bruce and the spider! But there wasn't any spider, and the Bruce was a bully and fond of his food. Shall the iconoclastic Under-Secretary for Scotland be allowed to get away with this rodomontade? Possibly in Greenock, but surely not in Dunedin! Where is our Caledonian Society, where our Burns Club, our Gaelic Society, our Pipe Band? Had a Sassenach said these things about the Bruce they had not been so slow to rise and glut their ire. Moreover the reckless Under-Secretary for Scotland has maligned the whole race of spiders. Let him look to himself.


Otago Daily Times, 15 March 1930

This is the third time within a month that the proud traditions of Scotland have been assailed. Not long ago Mr Charles White declared that Bruce was an Englishman and that the men who fought under him at Bannockburn were not kilted Highlanders but Anglo-Saxons. A short time afterwards an intrepid Englishman braved the wrath of the clans by claiming Wallace as an Anglo-Saxon. Asked what Scotland was doing to repudiate these “slanders,” a prominent Scot dismissed them with the remark that it was “just envy.”


All the best,
Alan

p.s. Poll Tax Rolls etc are on https://scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/

[Anne H]

Here we are almost in 2019 and the same arguments from so long ago are still going on! I don't know if I should laugh, cry or scream!!

Thanks for the fascinating reading, Alan.

Now to have a look at those tax rolls.


Anne