Oliver Cary discusses the Coalition’s plans for the History curriculum in British schools and the Chalke Valley History Festival.
The Government’s focus on the next generation in Britain is evident with a new curriculum in core subjects being established next year and a complete implementation across subjects by 2014. Intellectuals, professors and teachers are among those who are critical of our curriculum, and it is understandable as the prestige of British education has faded. In global tables South Korea, Japan and China are among the highest-rated, with Finland topping the table for the majority of the last decade.
Michael Gove, secretary of education, hopes that changes to the history curriculum will spark a more fervent interest in the subject. The current system is often argued to be too modular and specific, and Gove wants children to understand a narrative of British history. Poor knowledge of important people and no grasp of British chronology are central to complaints of the latest generation of young people.
At the Chalke Valley History Festival this June, discussion between field experts and the public was prominent on this very subject. The event, the UK’s largest history festival, boasted lectures from Sir Max Hastings, Antony Beevor, Amanda Vickery, Jeremy Paxman, Michael Morpurgo, Ian and Victoria Hislop, Tom and James Holland, and Dan Snow amongst others. In discussion with a member of the audience, Dan Snow remarked that narrative history teaching based around chronology lacks depth and students cannot fully appreciate the effects or nature of the topic. James Heneage, co-founder of the festival, believes ‘it’s easy to drill facts into children’ but enthusiasm is lost.
However, enthusiasm was present at the festival across all age groups. From schoolchildren listening to Tom Holland’s animated telling of the Odyssey, to veterans of the Falklands war listening to Rowland White describing the role of the heroics of Vulcan bombers in the Falklands. While outside the tents, War Horse displays, sword schools and WW1 trench warfare re-enactments took place to the crowds. Ian Hislop described the festival as ‘quite extraordinary…with a great audience’. If Michael Gove’s wish for children to learn Britain’s ‘story’ is to come to fruition, the Empire must be seen as fashionable, says Jeremy Paxman. Paxman, in interview at the festival, commented that imperialist history is tarnished by prejudice as modular history often reduces a national perspective of history. He believes that history in schools has to ‘succumb to a dull doctrinal set of prejudices that don’t inspire people’.
Nick Gibb argued in the Telegraph this October that this debate is not new, and the kind of debate through which student ‘self-discovery’ occurs is through teaching continuity and change, as instigated in the 1920s at Teachers College, Columbia, New York. Perhaps the central issue is not how history is taught but its short exposure to children in schools. James Holland, the co-founder of the Chalk Valley History Festival, thinks that lack of knowledge and understanding is because History is ‘one of the subjects that can be opted out of very early on.’ History should be made compulsory to 16, asserts Linda Colley, as ‘it is in many European countries.’ A continuation to GCSE level allows not only more time for students to become enthused by the subject but also for topics to be returned to in more detail. David Cannadine, professor at Princeton University, in the Telegraph November 2011 said the current curriculum lacks time to look a ‘the big picture’ and that Sir Keith Joseph and Kenneth Baker wanted history to be studied until the age of 16 in their School Curriculum of 1981.
The intentions of the new approach of the curriculum are admirable but Gove’s chronological and British-based course may lead to introspection, says Tom Devine, professor at Edinburgh University. While it is important to ‘engage with those things that seem to be important but are not properly addressed’, as Paxman argues about British imperialism, our society is diverse and appreciation of African and Asian history is also important. Benjamin Zephaniah criticises Gove’s desire to focus on British history, as the Empire was oppressive and a British perspective only tells ‘half the story’. He thinks a wider understanding of events, and of different cultures is important in British education and continues to say ‘black history is not just for black people’.
Although debate over the nature and method of teaching history has been longstanding, criticism will continue in this country as teachers attempt to find the best way to educate, enthuse and impart the knowledge of the past to children. However, it is universally agreed that ‘you need to understand your past to make sense of what you’re doing now’ says James Holland. This cultural literacy allows people to participate in society, and perhaps Michael Gove’s new curriculum would be praised if it made History compulsory to 16.
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