History Day!

I've just been informed by my father (Happy Birthday Dad!) that today I have to write about history, and how it has affected me. Well, bit of a silly question, really, because history affects us all, whether we like it or not.

I always loved history lessons at school. My teacher, Miss Rose, instilled a love of history in most of her pupils, through her enthusiastic story telling and wry sense of humour. We were always encouraged to ask 'what if?' and 'how come?' We learned about the Renaissance, both World Wars, Vietnam and the Cold War, all of which has proved incredibly useful for me today, doing a journalism degree.

However, I have discovered that whilst I may have a good general idea of world history, there is a huge amount of people at my University who have absolutely no idea about what went on in the world twenty years ago, let alone earlier in the century. I won't refer to my housemate of last year as an example, because I think she is a rather dramatic exception rather than the rule - for example, she thought that John Major was Margaret Thatcher's son. She does a politics unit as part of her degree. I rest my case.

However, last year I did a unit called 'Global Perspectives.' Basically, looking at world history and how it has affected the state of the world today. The amount of people who had no idea about the Middle East Crisis or the Cold War completely astounded me. It was like it was compeltely new information to them that the world had been at the brink of a nuclear war. What on earth were they taught at school?

I won't bang on about this too much, because I will sound too much like my dad. However, I am very grateful to both him and my high school history teacher for giving me a great historical education.