Teach Secondary Issue 14.2

such as the fanatical Nazi Hanna Reitsch – the first woman in the world to fly a helicopter, who begged Hitler to let her fly him to safety fromhis Berlin bunker. And then there’s Melitta von Stauffenberg – a talented Jewish aeronautical engineer who was involved in the July 1944 bomb plot to kill Hitler. Beyond the binaries When viewing women throughout history, we must get away from the idea that a womanmust be either devout or faithless; virginal or promiscuous; violent or peaceful. Similar to how the ‘hero/villain’ narrative is inadequate for fully assessing men who lived in the past, we must recognise that women were – and are! – complex and multifaceted, and that many different things can be true of a woman at the same time. To gain a fuller understanding of women throughout history, their struggles and victories, we must also look beyond Europe. Native American figures, such as Pocahontas and Sacagewea, may already feature at KS3, but it’s worth also exploring women like SarahWinnemucca, who worked tirelessly during the late 19 th century to protect the US’ Native American population. Her work was so remarkable that when she died in 1891, her obituary was featured in the New York Times. This could promote some fascinating discussion WOMEN of the world The story of women’s struggle for rights and self-determination demands a better account than what students are taught, says Gemma Hargreaves T eaching just Elizabeth I, the Suffragettes, plus maybe Rosa Parks doesn’t do enough to accurately represent women, or the progress of women’s rights over time. We can do better than that. Often, the first historical women that students encounter in the course of their studies will be Henry VIII’s wives, Elizabeth I or perhaps Empress Matilda – all upper class royal types, and mostly while focusing on their proximity to powerful men. Why not start with Cattelena of Almondsbury? She was a Black Tudor, described by historian Miranda Kaufmann as having a ‘ Small-scale existence ’ – but that doesn’t mean she was insignificant. Kaufmann notes that, “ Her very ordinary presence, with her cow, on an English village common, is extraordinary, ” because of how it gives us the chance to look at commonly taught Tudor history through a different lens. Inaccuracies and neglect If we can at least rely on students learning about the Suffragettes, then howwell is that history being taught? Not as accurately as it should be, argues historian Fern Riddell in her biography of the Suffragette activist Kitty Marion, Death in Ten Minutes : “ The violence of the Suffragettes has been sanitised, downplayed and, in some cases, simply denied – a final injustice to those brave women who made impossible choices in the hope that the ends could somehow justify the means. ” These women were terrorists , and deserve to be remembered as such. Famous portrayals of the Suffragette movement in popular fiction – such as the ‘Sister Suffragette’ number in Mary Poppins – have conveyed inaccuracies, while overlooking the efforts of working class women involved with the cause. This can lead to misconceptions among students, since as Riddell points out, “ The sole purpose of the attacks was to cause terror. ” KittyMarion would have likely found herself having lots in common with the French activist Pauline Léon, who was active a century before Kitty’s teenage exploits with the Suffragettes in London. Pauline Léon is now known primarily as a French revolutionary, with her advocacy for women’s rights often seen as secondary – yet she actively encouraged women to bear arms and literally fight for change. An interesting challenge for history teachers could be to explain the values, goals and characters of complex women like Pauline Léon, alongside Marie Antionette – who was herself complex, but in starkly different ways. We could also explore the similarly complex lives of the women who flew for Hitler as pilots. Nazi Germany is a perennial curriculumfixture in virtually every school, but the experiences of women under that regime are often overlooked or marginalised. In this era we find women in the history classroom about who gets remembered, and the criteria used to ascribe ‘significance’. 20 th century America may well have seen some women gain the right to vote via the 19th Amendment, but the ‘Roaring 20s’ and subsequent decades were markedly less full of joy and opportunity for working class and Native American women. African-American women had to wait until 1965 for the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Most British secondary school students will know the story of Rosa Parks, but far fewer will have knowledge of Claudette Colvin. She was 15 when, in 1955 – nine months before Rosa Parks’ famous protest – she refused to give up her seat on a segregatedMontgomery bus to a white passenger. There are clear opportunities for classroom debate here – from the causes and consequences of Colvin’s actions, to whether she, or someone or something else ought to be credited with triggering the Civil Rights movement. Let’s also not forget that much closer to home, women were involved in the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963. The ‘change’ narrative It was around this time that students inMao’s China were being taught a revised, and distinctly limited story of their country via the Little Red Book . Fanatical female students were employed as Red Guards, who would use violence to tackle, and ultimately “Wemust get away fromthe idea that awomanmust be eitherdevout or faithless” 68 teachwire.net/secondary