There is really a book called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. With apologies to the author of that book — a book I have never read, I might add — I beg to disagree with the title. All I really need to know I learned from musicals. That has become clear for some time, as I’m sure faithful readers of the blog will agree. After all, among other things, I have previously established how my knowledge of German was given a kick-start by knowing the words to a song from Cabaret.

I bring this up today because over the weekend, a corollary to the basic statement arose: all I really need to know about history, I apparently learned from Disney movies.

It’s true.

First example: While staying at a  little hotel in the Bloomsbury section of London over the weekend, I picked up a novelized version of a story about a women who was an advocate for the rights of women in the 1800s in England. Nowadays, we would call her a feminist. But of course, back then they were called suffragettes.

As I read the back of the book, it occurred to me that I don’t know much about these women or their histories. As a matter of fact, the only thing I did know about them was what I learned from the movie Mary Poppins, specifically from the song sung by the mother, Sister Suffragettes.  I decided to read the book, but that song kept running through my head every time the word suffragette was mentioned.  The book I read, The Sealed Letter, was just so-so, IMHO, but it did inspire me to look up more information about the real-life stories of Emily Faithfull, the suffragette in the book who started her own printing press company, and her colleagues. It also inspired me to discover the street Miss Faithfull lived on, which turned out to be not too far from where we were staying; there’s no plaque, though, since apparently she fell out of favor with some of her colleagues and got written out of many of the history books. Interesting stories, I’m sure.

Anyway, the following day we decided to pay a visit to another area of London called Notting Hill Gate. It’s famous because it’s the home of the Portobello Road Market, which is a vast warren of antique stalls in narrow buildings; there’s also a special flea market set up every Saturday.

Well, at least that’s how it used to be. I first visited there on my own over 30 years ago, when it really had a series of antique objets d’art (real or faked) for sale in each stall, the whole street had a sense of atmosphere that matched the song Portobello Road from the movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I had seen the movie as a kid, read about the street and the shops in books, and was eager to see it in person. So, I figure out how to visit it back in the 1980s when I was on a bus tour that didn’t have a scheduled stop there. I skipped a tour of Buckingham Palace (or something like that)  to make my way out to the “street where the riches of ages are sold”. Or so the song Portobello Roadgoes.

Alas, these days the street is more for tourists; the musty antique shops are slowly being replaced with high-end cafes and tourist-trap schlock stands. The original style stores aren’t all gone, but there are far fewer than there were even just 4 years ago when Chris and I met a friend in that area for lunch. Still fun to see … and fun to hum the song while we were there.

Disney movies as educational tools for bygone eras. Look for my scholarly treatise on the subject to be published soon… 😉