It seems to me that it would be a scandal for only 4% to know these dates if what we were trying to teach them was these dates. But we are not. History teachers have made a conscious decision in the last 2 decades to follow the paths being blazed by academic historians. They do not ask when the Battle of Waterloo was. They ask why Britain defeated France in a long and gruelling war. Does the Daily Express have a view on this issue? If we are limited in memory capacity, as some of out students are, what is essential? If, taking an extreme example, a student can only remember one thing - what is the key fact? Is it the date of the Battle or the result?

The other area of your piece which I would pick up on is that dates and chronology should be the servant and not the master. The house of 1900 had no television, no computer etc. The house of 2000 does. What really matters here? Should students learn that houses in 1900 had no TV? Or should they learn that there has been amazing technological change in the 20th century and a lot of this change has dramatically affected the home? Few would regard David Starkey's recent programmes on Elizabeth 1 as flimsy or unhistorical, yet what proportion of these has been devoted to dates. If we sort out the difference between dates and developments, while recognising that dates help us to chart developments, we may move on from sterile exploitation of random samples of people who have forgotten particular dates.

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