Ramblings of Another Person

Random knowledge shared, laughed at, wondered about, considered and discarded

Curtain Walls and Barbicans

  • June 22, 2010 1:36 pm

Another thought on the subject of the school systems…

Just a few years ago, the daughter of a friend asked my husband if he would help her with a school project. Since my husband is from Scotland and they have a real castle as part of their family heritage and some of his friends actually live in castles (i.e. The Earl Gray, Humphrey Wakefield of Chillingham Castle, The Duke of Northumberland, Ralph (Rafe) Percy of Alnwick Castle – Harry Potter Castle to those that have no knowledge of its true name), and the assignment was to build a model castle…my husband was the perfect person to assist in the project. Now keep in mind that the class that this project was for had nothing to do with history, mythology, building or anything of the sort…the class was for her English class…Sooooooooooo….

My husband helps her to build a castle out of cardboard, and to label each part. She went into such detail that it would have been a beautiful doll house. She even colored and textured it to give it a more authentic feel. Well anyway….our friends daughter was so proud of her castle and she just knew that she would get an “A” for such a wonderful job. My husband was excited too…so when we called once she got home from school, she burst into tears! Then her mother told us that she had received an “F” because the castle had not been factual, but a creation from her over active imagination, and that some parts that she had added to the castle, two parts in particular known as the CURTAIN WALL AND BARBICAN, were incorrect and did not actually exist in real castles.

My husband was a bit perturbed, to put it mildly. He called the school the next day and left a message for this teacher. When the teacher returned his call, he introduced himself and then asked her if she had ever visited Scotland, England, France, or any other part of Europe. She said that she had not and wanted to know why he was interested. He once again introduced himself, only this time telling her that he had personally helped our friends daughter with her project. He also went on to tell her about his background, where he had grown up…some of the castles he was VERY familiar with and that each of those castles did in fact have a “CURTAIN WALL AND BARBICAN” at one point or another and that for her to assume that she would know more than he was rather ridiculous, and that the child that he had helped was in fact devastated over the grade that she had received from a teacher that could not possibly know anything factual about castles, since she herself had never seen one and didn’t know the true workings of a castle. To this the teacher responded that she had never heard of a “CURTAIN WALL or a BARBICAN” therefore it did not exist.

OKAY! Soooo….what the heck are we teaching our children when the teachers are spreading their own ignorance?

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