(no subject)

[ljgeoff]

Kyle's first assignment: "Look at the world map and stick a pin in it. That's where we'll start."

His choice? Scotland.

Um. Hrmm. So, I've seen Braveheart and read Gabaldon's Dragonfly in Amber series. And, lessee, there's Golf and Calvinism and haggis.

So, tonight's assignment (Kyle is a vampire) is -- one page each on William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. We'll look at Robert Burns ... Um... We will discuss the cultural importance of the tartan.... We'll cook something that isn't haggis...And then there's Queen Mary, James I and James II, the Bonny Prince, Culloden... the current separatist movement ...

Any other ideas?

**feeling particularly lame**

Comments

[ailbhe]

I'd start with getting questions out of Wikipedia. Things like "Is that actually true?" make a good start. So.

The Clearances. Billy Connolly has a lot to say on poverty in Glasgow. The fact that it's called Scotland because it was full of Scots, ie people from Ireland. Using denigration of a language to control a people. Does that help?

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

Using denigration of a language to control a people.

I find this particularly interesting. Could you amplify?

[ailbhe]

I don't ACTUALLY know very much about it, but part of the reason Irish (Gaeilge) and Welsh and Scots Gaidhilig and Scots (the one that's very like English) started to die out and had to be forcibly revived was because of things like deliberately making education unavailable in those languages so children had to learn English. Ireland had illegal "hedge schools" where children were taught sedition, maths and classics through Irish. I expect investigation would show something similar for Scotland, though I don't know whether it was ever *illegal*.

Result: parents and children speaking different languages; one language being the language of poverty, the other the language of aspiration; distancing people from their histories, written and oral; some other stuff.

I don't know anything about it in detail and what I do know has political bias up to its eyebrows so I don't really trust it. But I bet it would be interesting.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

Ah, like the Native American thing. Yeah.

[limnrix.livejournal.com]

Hume

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

Hmm... no philosophy background, though. Leads to more basic stuff, though. Thanks!

[firecat]

Bagpipes?

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

d'oh!