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The purposes of school history
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Statements about school history to
develop knowledge/understanding/awareness/’a mental map’ of
the country and the society they live in: ‘They
(young people) cannot
play their full part in operating and improving the institutions
of our society or in preserving, constructively criticising and
adapting its values, unless they have a well developed sense of
our national past. They need to have some feeling of the ebb and
flow of events that have led to where we are, how our present
political and social fabric and attitudes have their roots in
the English Reformation, the Reform Bills, the Tolpuddle Martyrs
and the Suffragette Movement, and how our national security, our
place in the world, was shaped by Waterloo and El Alamein.’
Kenneth
Baker, politician, Guardian,
24 December.
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| ‘One
of the justifications given for teaching history is its role in
the ‘orientation’ of pupils, hence concern that pupils might
leave school ‘without an adequate mental map of those things
which have led us to where we are now and without the
wherewithal to form even a preliminary judgement on what was
good or bad, glorious or inglorious.’ |
Kenneth
Baker, politician.
Guardian, 24 December. |
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‘’It
is only through knowledge of its history that a society can have
knowledge of itself. As a man without memory and self-knowledge
is a man adrift, so a society without memory (or more correctly
without recollection) and self-knowledge would be a society
adrift.’
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Arthur
Marwick, historian. |
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‘History,
well taught, is the demythologising of the past… Take any
important issue of our time – Northern Ireland, Nuclear
Disarmament, Race, The Welfare State, South Africa – and it
becomes impossible to seriously confront any of them without
understanding their historical background.’
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Lord
Bullock, quoted in Historical Association (1989) History
in the National Curriculum: submission to the working party on
the National Curriculum, February. |
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‘If
we have no tools to judge between different stories about the
past, then history would be unable to answer the atavistic
instinct that gives rise to the discipline in the first place:
how did we get here, and what happened to those before us?’
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Charmley,
J. (2003) ‘How did we get from here to there?’, Guardian Review, 16 August: 12. |
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‘The
divorce between current affairs and history, so that they are
regarded as two different subjects, gravely weakens both. It
accentuates the natural tendency of children to regard history
as something remote and irrelevant instead of something which
has formed the world around them and which is continuously being
formed by that world. And, it accentuates equally the tendency
to look at contemporary questions as though they had no context
in time, no parallels or precedents.’ |
Ministry
of Education (1952) Teaching
History, pamphlet No. 23, London, HMSO: 32.
|
| ‘You
impoverish your understanding of what a human being is if you
don’t examine your past. Would one have known about brutality,
cruelty, courage, virtue, self-sacrifice, cynicism without
history? Yes, but observing it in one’s contemporaries is a
less reliable, ultimately more shallow source that observing
over centuries.’ |
Schama,
S. (2005) Observer magazine, 16 October: 10.
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| ‘There
is no evidence that school pupils translate their knowledge of
the past into an understanding of the present unless the past is
explicitly related to current circumstances.’ |
Slater,
J., (1995) Teaching History in the New Europe, p. 146. |
| ‘There
is too little understanding of our democratic and cultural
heritage, of the basis of taxation, and spending, of the limits
of government, and of what makes people and groups tick.’ |
John
Patten (politician) (1994) ‘Patten castigates young for apathy
towards country and community, Guardian,
6 January.
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| ‘’When
challenged during inspections about the role of history in the
curriculum, pupils are quick to point out that history provides
an essential context for being an effective, informed citizen,
by helping them to understand in particular, the evolution of
the UK, its place in the world and how its history compares with
other countries.’ |
HMI
(2005) Taken from the
Annual Report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector for Schools
2004/5, section relating to history in secondary schools.
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| ‘History
is important. More than any other topic, it is about us. Whether
one deems our present society wondrous or awful or both, history
reveals how we got to this point.’ |
James
W. Loewen (2008) Lies my
teacher told me, introduction: 2.
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| (Advocating
the teaching of separate ‘Black History’ in the US) ‘The
psychological goals of Black History are remedial. Black History
must be taught in order to fight racial prejudice which causes
lowered self-esteem and defective self-image.’ |
Hoover,
D. (1970) Black History, in M. Ballard (ed) New movements in the study and teaching of history: 41.
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| ‘Many
communities are representatives of cultures that flourished with
great distinction long before European colonisation. To ignore
these achievements may serve to reinforce or leave unchallenged
serious misunderstandings about communities within this country
and may also lead to an unbalanced view of world history… The
multi-ethnic nature of British society is a further reason why
those responsible for designing history courses need to be
sensitive about the choice of course content.’ |
HMI
(1985) History in the
primary and secondary years, London, HMSO: 31.
|
| (Detailing
some flaws and misconceptions in the practice of
‘multi-cultural’ history) ‘First, that any content
reflecting a multi-cultural society should emphasise the recent
post-war history of the Caribbean, the Indian sub-continent or
Africa. Second, that multi-cultural history is concerned
principally with problems, conflict and exploitation. Third,
that the teaching of those areas is ipse facto of interest to pupils whose families may have
originated in those parts of the world, and that, for example,
any black pupil will automatically identify and be interested in
the history of any black culture or individual. There is also
the attitude associated with some of these assumptions – that
the present generations in some way share a heritage of guilt
for the mistakes, some of criminal proportions, of their
predecessors. This point of view is neither morally nor
historically justifiable.’ |
HMI
(1985) History in the
primary and secondary years, London, HMSO: 31.
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| ‘There
are two essentials: that the child should know something of the
procession of British life through the centuries and something
of the historical forces which are making the framework in which
he will live.’ |
King,
B. (1929) Schools of today:
67-8.
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| ‘Our
history drives our sense of national identity, and this is why
history should be enshrined by politicians at the heart of our
education system. Our national identity is central to our
politics and so it must be of central concern to politicians.
Unresolved questions about our national identity run through
many of the great issues facing this country today, from the
constitutional settlement, to our role in Europe, from the war
against terrorism, to great global flows of people and capital,
the resulting rise of a new right-wing populism, the
anti-globalisation movement, and even to how and why we deliver
public services in the way that we do. Our response and our
attitude to all these things is coloured by the sense we have of
where we belong, and where we owe our loyalty and why.’ |
Michael
Wills (Labour M.P.) (2005) A
politician’s view, address to IHR Conference, London, 26
October, online at
http://www.history.ac.uk/education/conference/wills.html
(last accessed 21 August).
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| History
is ‘the body of known facts about the activities and
sufferings of the social groups with which our own lives are
continuous, and through reference to which our own customs and
institutions are illuminated.’ |
Dewey,
J. (1916) Democracy and Education, Chapter 16, The significance
of geography and history,
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/ |
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