an idea of the world as it has
been, is necessary for me to write about the world as it
is in a balanced way. I find the pursuit of history is a
kind of duty, and yet I get pleasure from it, and I think
the fact that knowledge can also be pleasure is one of
the most important factors in planning the education of
people of all ages.
This is why I support the Matthew Baillie Begbie
competition... Understanding our own society leads us to
understanding the nation and the world. By knowing our
own past we begin to understand by comparison the pasts
of other cultures.
I do not believe that history - the knowledge of the past
- enables us to foretell the future. But I do believe it
helps us to understand it as it unfolds. And it also
helps us to avoid errors in the present. If the Nazis had
not misinterpreted the history of Germany, they would not
have made such brutal demands on the future, and vast
suffering might have been prevented.
But, important as history is, the critical spirit with
which we view it is equally important. We live in a vast
continuum of facts. For a man to write down even his own
life in detail as it happened every day would be an
impossible task. So historians select their facts and
make their patterns out of events, and we have to be
critical and aware, examining these patterns for
ourselves and deciding how they correspond to life as we
see it.
This is why I support the Matthew Baillie Begbie
competition. I consider it an encouragement to enquiry
and to developing the critical spirit, and a restatement
of the importance of learning history... I also approve
of its dedication to that great British Columbian,
Matthew Baillie Begbie, who has often been misinterpreted
as a "hanging Judge" (actually his juries did
not let him sentence many people to hanging), but who
looked with unusual foresight on some of our great
historical problems. When even the labour unions were
antagonistic to Chinese immigrants, Begbie defended them,
and it was he, before anyone else, who realized that the
land question lay at the crux of difficulties between
native peoples and newcomers. He was in private a
compassionate and hospitable, and in his heart a
strangely humble man who deserves to be celebrated.
For all these reasons I join the organizers of the
competition in urging you to support it generously and so
to re-establish history as one of the important fields of
study in our schools. To know and to interpret our past
sensibly is one of the essentials of life in modern
times. No country, no community can take its proper place
in this compellingly united world without knowing itself
and being known by its citizens, which our children so
quickly become.
George Woodcock, BCSSTA Newsletter, Winter 95/96 |
