Lack of education on Welsh history has failed us all

Why is British history SORRY ENGLISH HISTORY rammed down our throats in our schools we have our own history of which goes back around a thousand years before the arrival of the barbaric savages the tribes that where to form England

It was policy not to teach Welsh history from the Welsh perspective. A great little book is, The Fight for Welsh Freedom by Gwynfor Evans. It's an easy read.

Sadly the people of Cymru know almost nothing about our history. Who decided to wipe us off the map? Guess who!! When I attended Ysgol Gymraeg Dewi Sant in Llanelli in the 1950s we did learn a little about our history but then on entering the Llanelli Boys' Grammar Technical School it was all about the glorious triumphs of English kings and queens.

My daughter enjoyed history at school and studied Welsh History at Cardiff University in 1990. At the end of her first term, she came home and exclaimed furiously that she had never been taught any Welsh History and its fundamental role in the history of the UK at either O or A levels. She was extremely indignant, it was a big wake up call for her.

I & many others of my age group will recognise the account you have portrayed in your article Niklas along with a previous article by Stephen Price in NC. My education was through the Monmouthshire Board of education in the 60s/70s. As far as our history lessons went it concentrated on England's narrative in the main with detours into European history that even then, always seemed to accentuate the relationships & disputes between the ruling dynasties or royal families through the ages. When I left school I could recite the birth date, accessions & deaths of all the kings & queens of England from Ethelred onwards ( & no, please don't ask me to now 50 years later). All I knew of our Cymraeg history was we painted ourselves blue, the Romans invaded & assimilated us, the Vikings came & caused a stir then the Anglo Saxons & Normans came to impose themselves on us. The Tudors as you say sold us out then during the industrial revolution the coal & iron "masters" virtually enslaved us. Both Rebecca & the Chartist movements were taught in fairness but nothing to the extent that British/English history was portrayed. The BBC is not much better in that it would seem by their historical output British history started some time in the 14th century & again contains a mainly English narrative concentrating as always on the royalist angle. Like you I came/stumbled upon Cymraeg history later in life, my route was through my local library and also it has to be said that despite it's many critics, the internet has been a godsend as to just how much is out there that I personally was never aware of. It's so pleasing to see that this issue is now being addressed in our schools & hopefully historical parity & accuracy regarding the British isles can become the normal way of things for our future generations.

Elin Jones's book History Grounded brilliantly shows how 5,000 years of Welsh history is all around us and where to look for it - it's packed full of interesting stuff and is an easy read. Recommended

(And it's aimed at schools...)

Libraries, Ladybird Books, even comics and Tell Me Why / Look and Learn for those of a 1960s disposition - and curiosity - why always wait to be told an official partial version of history? We should be taught to take responsibility for our own learning from an early age.

Would be nice to live in Wales/Cymru where the vast majority of Welsh children and adults know more about e.g. Owain Glyndwr and Hywel Dda than Henry VIII and his wives...

There is much written about how awful the Welsh Not was, and its impact on the Welsh language - justly so. What isn't written about is the Labour party in Cymru via its education policies/political interference in the school curriculum denying our children being taught Welsh history. The Labour party over the last 100 years are the true villains in this story, they will go down in history as promoting Britishness at the expense of our own history being taught in Welsh schools. It is time we called them out for what they've done to our country!

This argument often comes up, is Welsh independence really any different to Brexit? Well, simply put, yes it is, and there are reasons aplenty. For one, the EU has never imposed laws upon us (all EU laws were accepted and approved by Westminster), can we say that for Cymru? Then there's the real reason behind Brexit, bigger profits for big business, via (believed) less regulation, is that the reasoning behind the seeking of Welsh independence? Whereas Brexit is a nationalistic cause, Welsh independence is a patriotic cause. No one living in Cymru is excluded from the vision. Unlike Brexit, Welsh independence does not involve wanting to close boarders or reject certain peoples. Brexit wants it's version of 'independence' because certain people fear immigration, that is not the case with Welsh independence. Welsh independence is about freeing a country that was taken illegally, by force, plundered for it's resources and then more or less neglected. None of those things, or anything near as bad, warranted Brexit.

Like many here I was taught nothing about Welsh history in school. It was not until I went back to college at the age of fifty that I started to delve into the subject. We had to write an essay about our favourite Welsh person. Whereas, many wrote about Tom Jones or Gareth Bale, I chose to write about Owain Glyndwr and it opened my eyes. Not just to the lack of Welsh history being taught in schools but how our neighbour has really treated us for centuries. As a nation we should make Welsh history a priority in our schools, from a young age. Whether the British establishment likes it or not, Cymru is a separate country, with it's own, history, language, customs and traditions and our children need to learn far more about it.

Please can we stop referring to Owain Glyndwr as a Welsh rebel - this is merely perpetuating the English subjugation of Cymru. It is my understanding that Owain Glyndwr was Prince of Wales or a King - please correct me if I'm wrong.

Can you stop using AI 'art'?

I thought the current thinking is we all have to be ashamed of our history and therefore must "decolonise" everything and re-imagine that all historical figures must be portrayed by any ethnicity other than the original.

I'm in my early/mid twenties and very much remember being taught welsh history in llanidloes, lots of our time was dedicated to llwellyn ap gruffydd & owain glyndwr. Although I have a feeling that was largely due to how passionately welsh our history teacher was!?

Fully agree. The new Welsh national curriculum is supposed to address this, but I'm not convinced it will. I hope so, but I think we need to be vigilant

I have a blog where I share the true Welsh history and debunk stupid myths like glyndwr killed as many Welshmen and Welshmen fought for English against llywelyn , IV also proved the "Welsh fought eachother more than anyone else" to be wrong but I keep getting dismissed as a nationalist . Why is promoting Welsh history nationalism?

as a welsh born person, i was born in 1950. i was taught english history in school. but i the good fortune to be able to read about our welsh history at home. my grandfather had purchased history books so was able to learn all i wanted..

There is a misapprehension about Florence Nightingale, Betsi Cadwaladr and Mary Seacole. There is a Blue Peter John Nettleton idea that all three are equivalent heroic nurses. In fact they are all interesting women but for different reasons. Florence Nightingale was an upper class English woman with a university level education who did study nursing under Lutherans in Germany in order to establish quality nurse training in the UK. In effect she was really a hospital educator and administrator using science to validate her work. Mary Seacole was actually a traditionally trained physician and nearer to a doctor than a nurse. She was mixed race but again quite middle class. Betsi Cadwaladr was the daughter of a non conformist preacher who seems to have enjoyed travel which she followed by being hired as a servant although she did do some nursing.

I would describe the english-centric "british" history as a polished turd not a diamond!

I did Welsh 'A' Level history in the 70s, for the WJEC, which was divided into 'British' (English), Welsh, and European history. I had to answer at least two exam questions on Welsh history. I'm appalled to hear that most of Cymru did not have this as part of their history teaching.

The history of history is that for a century or more the peoples of this island were taught that they were on a great civilizing mission. They learnt about Rome because Roman had an Empire. They were taught that the arrival of the self-reliant and freedom loving Anglo-Saxons and their language inevitability lead to a system of law and justice and mother of parliaments that others worldwide would desire to copy. There was no room for Welsh history, culture or language in that narrative. The question is not whether or not more prominence should be given to Welsh history in Welsh education, it should, but what do we want from history education? T H Parry Williams’ poem “Hon” asks why we should care at all.  Dafydd Iwans’s “Yma o hyd” suggests maybe Wales’ greatest achievement is to exist at all- despite everything and everyone. In his poem “A Welsh Landscape”, R. S. Thomas wrote “…there is no present in Wales, and no future; there is only the past, brittle with relics…”. There is a danger of creating an institutionalized Wales in which the nation’s history and culture and language are packaged away (and disempowered, conveniently for some) in history books and museums and heritage centres and Eisteddfodau and when we step outside our doors or go online we find ourselves not in Wales but in the Anglosphere. Today, I read on Golwg360 an article by Alun Rhys Chivers describing the “fandaliaeth/vandalism” of the Wicipedia-Cymraeg website. Wales has been discovered! There are countries with ethnic or linguistic minorities for whom Wales’ attempts to resist assimilation sets a bad example. How will Wales rise to these challenges?