When I first drafted this post, the title was my hook – what an amazing question! With questioning, I discovered the Year 8 students was asking about television weather forecasts rather than shipborne radar; either way, the weakness in her chronological understanding is clear.
Then, only last week, one of my Year 7’s pulled out an equally brilliant nautical example to an external presenter:
“You know that ship on the Thames?”
Presenter: “HMS Belfast?”
“Is that anything to do with Henry VIII?”
Both examples highlight:
The problem of poor chronological understanding
It’s one of the easiest problems to notice and diagnose because the results of its expression are so incongruous they are immediately noticeable; a poor evaluation of the significance of Einstein is simply less bizarre to hear. Additionally however, this problem cuts to the heart of curriculum design in history (English, and perhaps the arts more generally).
Another example:
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The Echo Chamber 