Lessons from History for Educators (Guest Post by April Jaure of the Bartleby Project)
I like learning about history. I think it’s just fascinating. I also like to imagine. And these days my imagination keeps taking me to two different eras in history: one, quite some time ago, and the other, to the era of my grandparents.
The first period in history that my mind keeps pondering begins in 1066, in England. Yes, to the Battle of Hastings. It was this battle in which the French Normans defeated the English, and the Normans began to rule England. The Norman aristocracy replaced the English aristocracy and French became the language of the elite. For 300 years, English, as a language, completely disappeared from the written record. All business and legal contracts were in Latin or French. The royalty, nobility, lawyers, professors, merchants, and students spoke French and read and wrote Latin. Anyone who had any sort of power knew these two languages. But guess what? We are still speaking English today! (Obviously). And in fact, English is now Globish, a language spoken by more than a billion people throughout the