ANST - Educational view

[ansteorra at Ansteorra.ORG]

> />>Since we are a EDUCATIONAL HISTORICAL recreation group, I say
> />>ditto. Events are fun, but if you are not sharing the wealth of know-
> />>ledge, how else are we to grow? 
>
> For it to rub off on others WE have to be enthused about and spread the fun
> of the things WE do that are MORE "PERIOD", and MORE "HONOURABLE" etc...

I myself am having a harder and harder time believing that the SCA is an
educational group.

If we were educational, how can the phrase "recreate the middle ages as
they should have been" be a motto?  "Should have been" is fiction, not
education.  It's like showing the movie/musical Camelot to educate people.

If it were educational, why is somebody who cares about accuracy termed an
authent-o-crat and generally looked down upon (from what I've experienced)?
In general, SCA'ers seem more concerned with socializing and partying all
dressed up in garb than historical fact.

Is the picture the SCA is presenting accurate?  How many inacuracies can
you think of?  How many observers may start to believe that the sort of
things we do are the way things were?

If I joined the SCA for "educational" purposes, I'd learn that in the
middle ages:

   * Almost everyone had the opportunity to aspire to a position of some
     sort, whether it be king, queen, knight, baron, autocrat, or whatever.
     That the blue-blood to peasant ratio was not that different.

   * Most of the people were rich as is evident by their fine clothes,
     clean clothes, their plates, silverwear, etc.

   * Awards, honors, and special mentions were quite plentiful.

   * Almost everyone owned metal armor and fought with rattan.

   * All people fought honorably and everyone tried to be polite.

   * Religion was not a very prominent part of people's lives.  Crosses
     were rarely displayed and religious talk rarely heard.

   * Kings never defend their throne from usurpers.

   * The majority of the people in the middle ages were from Europe.
     Very little of the earth's population were in the Middle East or
     Far East and nobody lived in the Americas.

   * Women alternated between middle-eastern and traditional european
     clothing.  Several traditional european types donned belly-dancer
     garb and danced to the drums at night.

   * People camped in canvas tents with screens and zippers.

   * Early period personas lived side-by-side with later period
     Rennassiance personas.

The SCA is more of a 20th century, politically correct, polished version
of the middle ages.

Granted, I'm no authent-o-crat myself.  I appreciate the things of the
middle ages, but I'd prefer a party to a museum tour.  But I'm not trying
to fool myself that it's education for me or anyone else.

-Karl von Augsburg
__________________________________________________________________________
Joel Schumacher                        JCPenney Co. - UNIX Network Systems
jschumac at uns-dv1.jcpenney.com          12700 Park Central Pl
(972) 591-7543                         Dallas TX  75251
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