Teaching History

[poliphilo]

The teaching of history in schools is hugely controversial.  Rightwing people want it to be all about Nelson and Churchill. Leftwing people want it to be all about the slave trade and the chartists.  Apparently the current solution is to dodge aside from the fire fight and make it all about Hitler- because everyone can agree about the rights and wrongs of him.

Quite apart from the politics- or the lack of a "common culture" as Martin Kettle has it- there's the problem of just how much history there is to teach- 3,000 years of it and counting (that is if you don't include prehistory, which archaeology is making less and less opaque).  So your grandkids know lots about Martin Luther King and nothing about Martin Luther? Yup, that's bad- but would you really want it the other way round? And where are you going to find time in a highly pressurized curriculum to make sure they learn about both? 
 
Are there things that should absolutely be in the syllabus?  Probably. But I don't know what they are, because I can think of so many.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I've always been dubious about the National Curriculum, precisely because it means that everyone is ignorant about the same things. Thus, while no child leaves primary school without a bit of exposure to the Romans, Greeks, Tudors, Victorians and WWII, never a one of them will have been taught about, say, the Glorious Revolution, or anything that happened in the 50 years following it - a period of huge significance for the understanding of where the UK is today. In the old days, ignorance was spread more evenly, and thus we could compensate for each other's failings. Today, we all fall into the same pot-holes.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's a good point.

The Glorious Revolution has always been unfashionable. I can't think why. Maybe it's because you couldn't teach it without raising the uncomfortable (to the English) issue of the subjugation of Ireland.