[WikiEN-l] Re: Jacques Delson and Helga-ism

[Anthere]

--- Julie Kemp <juleskemp at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Anthere said:
> 
> He ! We indeed consider he was the first king of
> France when he was made Christian by Saint Rémi
> (even
> though we usually refer to him as King of the franks
> ...). He was the one who started the history of
> France, and we are tought he was chosen by the tribe
> of franks to be king, and gave its name to our
> country. But, what do we know ? It is just what we
> learn in school :-) With no proof he was indeed
> considered a king at that time.
> Another future info fork between the french and the
> english wiki :-)
> 
> 
> I respond: 
> I think this is the root of the problem -- What's in
> textbooks is not
> always accurate!  I don't know how it's done in
> France, but I think it's
> similar everywhere in that much is decided by
> committee.  If you
> subscribe to some of the H-net mailing lists, like I
> do, or belong to
> the American Historical Association, you know how
> bad it can be.  Here,
> the states of Texas and California have a lot of
> influence on what is
> included or omitted, because they buy a lot of
> textbooks.  In fact,
> there are cases of textbooks being revised because
> Texas won't buy -- a
> well-known example is a biology text that talked
> about evolution as
> something that happened, rather than as a theory
> along with creationism.
> I think it's not unlikely that many countries
> provide their children
> with history that often does more to uphold a
> national mythos than
> troublesome historical fact!
> 
> 
> In the French case, what Anthere says, is kinda,
> sorta right ;-)  Clovis
> was the first Orthodox Christian King of a
> consolidated Frankish kingdom
> -- and the name France is derived from Francia, the
> Latin name for the
> Frankish kingdom.  Where it gets funny is that
> Francia is also the root
> for the German land of Franken ... or that (and
> here's where I find it
> odd) the Carolingians are much later, yet both
> Germans and French people
> consider Charlemagne "theirs."  SO what I've been
> trying to do is to
> explain why the French school version isn't exactly
> wrong, but that it's
> an over generalization -- maybe like remembering
> that Kozsiuszko
> (spelling probably way wrong) and DeKalb were heroes
> in the American
> Revolution and assuming that made them Americans. 
> BTW (pax to Erik), I
> was at a conference in March and brought up this
> issue.  There were
> scholars there from all over, and they all
> specialized in the period
> between 300 and 800.  Not one of them, including the
> nice lady from the
> Sorbonne, said that they would consider the
> Merovingians to be Kings of
> France, or even French.  
> 
> Back until I run screaming ;-)
> 
> Jules

That is interesting information; I did not know
Germans considered Charlemagne theirs. But then, we
share so much :-) (sausages, fries, trenches,
ecoregion...)
It is curious none of these people at the meeting
would agree with what is in the end taught to us. They
should be the authors of school programs, should not
they ? 
I think history programms are updated about every 50
years or so, except for a couple of chapters in very
recent history. Perhaps, some Merovingians were seen
as Kings of France 50 years ago ?
Note that if I cannot judge this in history, I can
certainly certify this is true in other topics. Some
teachers insist in explaining principles and theories
in geology, biology or ecology which were valid 20
years ago, but are considered vastly wrong by the
research community now. Or, the over-simplification
required at young age just lead to near-false
statements. To a certain point, this can't be avoided.

Before your next run-screaming, do not hesitate to
point out to what you would say are really good
articles in history, so I could list them in articles
"deserving" translation in french (It would be nice
that we attract a nice-lady from La Sorbonne right ?).

That is...I will list them later. I am currently on a
sick-leave from the french wikipédia. Running away
screaming might be a female habit :-) 

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