Food for Thought

Week 10: Thursday, March 31

Make sure you take a look at the web gallery. It's got all sorts of historical paintings from Hungary and Serbia that engaged in that selective memory that Renan claimed was necessary for a nation to exist.

1) According to Weber, what significant deficiencies existed in French schools before the passage of educational reform? What important steps did the government take to remedy these problems?

2) According to Weber, what did the French government seek to teach in public schools?

3) What appears to have been the main point of the excerpt from Lavisse's textbook on French history (oriented mainly toward ten- and eleven-year olds)? Did it seek to teach students about the Hundred Years War? Or did it seek to teach students about something else?

4) Explain in a paragraph the thesis of Hobsbawm's article "Mass Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914."