History and Citizenship
'Why do all regimes make their young
study some history in school? Not to understand society and how it changes, but
to approve of it, to be proud of it, to be or become good
citizens.'
Eric Hobsbawn, 'To see the future, look
at the past', The Guardian, 7 June 1997 |
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On a recent visit to the United States I was
struck by the number of houses which had a large Stars and Stripes flag flying
in the garden. I have not come across many houses in England which have the
Union Jack flying in the garden. Does this mean that the US has better or more
loyal citizens than we do, or that they take citizenship more seriously? A
recent international survey (Broadfoot, P., Osborn, M., Planel, C. and Sharpe,
K. 2000, Promoting quality of learning: does England have the answer?
London, Cassell) found that 57% of young people felt proud of their nationality
in France, as against only 35% in Britain. Is this because they have better
weather than us, or a more successful national football team, or is it the
fault of bad or ineffective history teaching in schools, or is it not the
business of history teachers to encourage young people to be proud to be
British (or English, Scottish etc)? |
'Arguing about the past has become a vital
part of being a member of society, an ordinary but important act of
citizenship, a factor in establishing the idea of a home as a place where you
would like to belong, and might be allowed to stay.' Marina Warner, BBC
Reith Lectures, 1994, quoted in 'Myth and memory', David Cesarani, The
Guardian, 24 January.
To what extent are these claims true- and
what do states mean by a 'good' citizen? The rulers of Sparta, Athens, Rome,
Jacobin France, Nazi Gemany, Soviet Russia, Victorian England and post-war
Holland had different views about what constitutes 'the good citizen' . Do
governments want citizens who are docile, unquestioning and compliant, or
critical, questioning and independent-minded? There is an 'official' position
on what constitutes the good citizen in Britain at the start of the 21st
century, which can be found in the stated general values, aims and purposes of
the school curriculum as outlined in pages 10-13 of The National Curriculum
(DfES/QCA, 1999) The statement about values in the National Curriculum is
available at www.nc.uk.net/statement_values.html
Are you aware of the current 'position' on
what constitutes citizenship education? What are the 3 main strands and 4
elements of citizenship education advocated by the Final Report of the Advisory
Group on Citizenship (The Crick Report), Education for the citizenship and
the teaching of democracy in schools? (DfEE/QCA, 1998)
Click here for the answer
Are you familiar with the National Curriculum
for Citizenship for KS3 and KS4? What does it say about citizenship? See
www.nc.uk.net
(I am not suggesting that you commit all
these things to memory, but it is interesting to think about the extent to
which these things are happening in practice, and the extent to which current
arrangements lend themselves to making these things happen).
It is important to remember that there are
very different ideas about the ways in which school history can contribute to
citizenship education. At the time of the post-Dearing review of the National
Curriculum, the debate about citizenship education focused largely around the
question of ideas about national identity, and the part which school history
might play in this.
Dr Nick Tate, the Chief Executive responsible
for the school curriculum made a number of high profile contributions to the
debate about citizenship and school history, all of which focused on the
question of national identity ('Why we must teach our children to be British'
The Sun, 19 July 1995, Speech to the Council of Europe Conference on
'The role of history in the formation of national identity', York, 18 September
1995, 'National identity and the school curriculum', The Welsh
Historian, No. 24, 7-9, 1996, speech to SCAA invitation conference on
Curriculum Culture and Society, London, 7 February 1996).
The debate was taken up in the national
press, with much discussion about 'What it means to be British at the end of
the 20th Century', the extent to which pupils should be taught about British
heroes and heroines, and the great events of our national past.
An
'e-conference' on school history, values, and national identity can be accessed
at http://www.hten.org.uk (Go to the
message board for instructions on how to access and contribute to the
conference)
There are, however, other strands to the
debate about the ways in which school history can contribute to citizenship
education, and it is important to keep in mind that there is more to history
and citizenship education than questions of national identity. Part of the
responsibility of the history teacher is to broaden pupils' conceptions about
what citizenship education might involve. Their experience of school history
and citizenship should not be blinkered because their history teacher focuses
exclusively on the element of citizenship which seems most important to them.
They should at the very least be made aware that there are very different views
about history and citizenship, and that views about what constitutes 'the good
citizen' have changed over time and place.
The following extracts have been collected to
try and make these points.
Professor Richard Aldrich makes the point
that for much of the time that history has been on the school curriculum in
Britain, its primary purpose has been to inculcate loyalty to the state and to
promote moral exemplars of the good citizen whose key virtues are a willingness
to defend the state from external threats or internal dissidents, to support
the empire and appreciate the virtues and advantages of British parliamentary
democracy. Aldrich characterises the traditional model of school history which
pertained until the 1960s as:
'cast in broadly self-congratutatory and
heroic, high political mould. Emphasis was placed upon the role of Britain as a
peacemaker in India and other colonised countries, and as an opponent of
tyrants from Napoleon to Hitler. Good government was exemplified by
Westminster, the "mother of parliaments", Britain's role as leader in the
industrial revolution, confirmed by the Great Exhibition of 1851, was seen as
proof of the nation's technical and entrepreneurial skills. Missionaries like
Wilberforce, Shaftesbury and Livingstone were hailed for having carried the
Christian message into the darkest corners both of England and of the Empire.'
(Aldrich, R. 1989, Class and gender in the study and teaching of history in
England in the twentieth century, Historical Studies in Education, Vol.
1, No. 1, p. 121). Aldrich and Dean also point to the use of school history as
a form of 'social cement', to bind the nation together (Aldrich, R. and Dean,
D. 1991, The Historical Dimension, in Aldrich, R. ed. History in the
National Curriculum, London, Kogan Page, pp. 93-113).
Characterised by David Sylvester as 'The
Great Tradition' of history teaching, (Sylvester, D. 1994, Change and
continuity in history teaching 1900-1993, in H. Bourdillon (Ed.) Teaching
History, London, Routledge, 9-23), this version of school history was parodied
by John Slater as follows:
'Content was largely British, or rather
Southern English; Celts looked in to starve, emigrate or rebel; the North to
invent looms or work in mills; abroad was of interest once it was part of the
empire; foreigners were either, sensibly, allies, or rightly, defeated. Skills-
did we even use the word? - were mainly those of recalling accepted facts about
famous dead Englishmen, and communicating them in a very eccentric literary
form, the exmination length essay.' (Slater, J. 1989, The politics of
history teaching; a humanity dehumanised?, London, IEUL, p.
1).
The following two quotes illustrate the
'traditional' view about the purposes of school history in the UK:
In 1905, the Board of Education Report cited
'Obedience, loyalty, courage, strenuous effort, serviceableness' as 'all the
qualities which make for good citizenship.'
In 1908, J. Willis-Bund, Chair of
Worcestershire Education Committee urged history teachers to 'Bring before the
children the lives and work of English people who served God in Church and
State, to show that they did this by courage, endurance and self-sacrifice,
that as a result, the British Empire was founded and extended, and that it
behoved every child to emulate them.' (Quoted in Batho, G. 1986, From a test of
memory to a training for life, in M. Price (Ed.) The Development of the
Secondary Curriculum, London, Croom Helm, 214-238).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, at the outbreak of
World War One, the Board of Education asked those responsible for the teaching
of history schools to consider how history 'may best be used to serve national
purposes.'(Memo. 6, on the teaching and organisation of Secondary Schools:
Modern European History 1914, Circular 869).
For a a short time after the war, a more
internationalist strand appeared in the rationale for school history. There
was, in some quarters, a concern that nationalistic modes of history teaching
may have been one of the factors contributing to the outbreak of the war.
Drummond argued that 'The child at school should be brought to realise the
solidarity of mankind and to have a feeling of community, indifferent to class,
nation or race.' (Drummond, H. 1929, History in Schools, p.
81)
However, as late as 1952, the Ministry for
Education explained that the rationale for school history was 'very largely
moral, because it is a matter of introducing them to their responsibilities. If
the soldiers and sailors who followed Marlborough and Wellington, Drake and
Nelson, had defended the independence of this country from foreign danger, they
in their turn might be called upon to do likewise. It the yeomen who supported
Pym and Hampden had won parliamentary liberties, they might be called upon to
defend and also to exercise those liberties.' (Ministry of Education, 1952,
Teaching History: Pamphlet No. 23, London, HMSO, 5-14.)
In 1994, Secretary of State for Education
John Patten stated that 'To have national pride should be seen as a virtue not
a vice. That is why the Prime Minister and I are determined to see British
history at the heart of history teaching in our schools.' (Department for
Education Press Release 70/94). In another speech he stated that 'All children
must understand such key concepts as empire, monarch, crown, church, nobility,
peasantry.... Public education sysems contribute to a willingness of persons to
define themselves as citizens, to make personal sacrifices for the community
and to accept legitimate decisions of public officials.' (Television broadcast,
BBC1, 24 March 1994).
As Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher argued
that pupils should study 'those periods of our history when greatest progress
was achieved compared to earlier times and when Britain was furthest in advance
of other nations' ((quoted in Little, V. 'A National Curriculum in History; a
very contentious issue', British Journal of Educational Studies, 1990,
Vol. XXXVIII, pp. 319-334. In a 1992 election address she stated that 'We are
quite different from the rest of Europe... we alone have not been occupied or
defeated for nearly a thousand years: they have regularly. We alone defeated
the tyrannies in Europe or rescued other people from it. We are a remarkable
people and it's right that we should keep our sovereignty and national
character.' (Election address Stockport 23 March 1992, quoted in Stockport
Express 26 March 1992).
It might be noted here that in the 1980s,
some left-leaning Local Education Authorities tried to use school history to
promote a different set of values and attitudes in young people, by using
history to persuade pupils of the virtues and benefits of cultural pluralism
and multicultural society. David Edgington of the Inner London Education
Authority talked of 'the healing role' of school history (Edgington, D. 1982,
'The role of history in multi-cultural education', Teaching History, No.
32, pp. 3-7). It was school history as a bit like the Michael Jackson/Paul
McCartney song 'Ebony and Ivory', with black and white living together in
harmony, and a bit of 'apologising' for The Empire, thrown in. In my school in
Manchester, the voyages of discovery were rechristened 'The voyages of
exploitation', and when teaching the Industrial Revolution, some history
teachers placed considerable emphasis on the fact that we had the first one by
exploiting our empire. One colleague criticised an exam question which asked
about the advantages and disadvantages of being part of the British Empire
because he argued that there weren't any advantages, and that children should
be told that. What school history you got was to some extent dependent on what
LEA you were taught in. If you were in the counties, you were more likely to
get the traditional 'patriotic' history, if you were in the metropolitan
boroughs, you were more likely to get 'multi-cultural' and 'anti-racist'
history. There were also many teachers who thought that history should not
address 'the affective domain', not be used to inculcate values and attitudes,
but should confine itself to developing pupils' intellectual abilities.
Secretary of State for Education John Patten echoed the concerns of many on the
Right who feared that the move away from the model of school history teaching
which had prevailed from Victorian times meant that schools were becoming
'value-free' zones, and complained about the insidious influence of 'cultural
relativism'- children not being taught about 'what was right and wrong.' A good
example of this school of thought can be found in an article by Donald
Naismith, Directory of Education for Croyden; 'Unlike their counterparts in the
inter-war years, most children leave school with little knowledge or
understanding of the events which have shaped their country's history, and with
even less prode in them... Britain has been silently repudiating its past and
losing its self respect in the process.' ('My country right or wrong', Daily
Telegraph, 17 July 1988).
The past 30 years have generally seen a move
away from the notion of citizenship through school history outlined by the
above quotes, towards a more critical and questioning approach to the national
past, and towards a belief that school history and citizenship should be at
least in part about helping young people to handle information intelligently
and critically. This means using school history to try and develop the
intellectual autonomy of young people, rather than as a vehicle to condition
their values and attitudes. (As Secretary of State for Education, David
Blunkett argued that school should help pupils develop the citizenship skill of
discerning between 'information and propaganda.' (Address to Conference on
Citizenship, Institute of Education, University of London, 7 July 1999). (In a
radio interview, he also said that 'We must infiltrate children's minds if we
are to have a society worth growing up in.' (BBC News, 19 October
1996).
These developments evinced a counter-reaction
from those who regretted the move away from more traditional renderings of
citizenship through school history. John Major claimed that there had been 'an
insidious attack' on school history (quoted in Chitty, C. and Simon, B. eds.
1993, Education answers back, London, Lawrence and Wishart), and John Stokes
M.P. asked in the House of Commons, 'Why cannot we go back to the good old days
when we learnt by heart the names of the kings and queens of England, the feats
of our warriors and our battles and the glorious deeds of our past?' (Stokes,
J. 1990, quoted in Daily Telegraph, 1 April.
There was a storm of protest when the
Archbishop of Canterbury stated that Britain was just 'an ordinary little
nation' (Carey, G. in 'Revelations: the clergy questioned' quoted in Daily
Telegraph, 6 April, 1994). Historian Paul Johnson claimed that 'To be born
British is to draw first prize in the lottery of life... We traduce Britain's
glory if we teach a history which makes us seem just like anyone else.'Daily
Mail, 30 April, 1994).
So, although there has been a move away from
the idea of school history to produce loyal, obedient and unquestioning
patriots, there are still differing views about citizenship and school history.
Because of this, it is helpful to look to the 'official' current guidance on
citizenship education (see references above to the Crick Report and the N/C for
Citizenship).
Some further quotes which
provide perspectives on education for citizenship through school
history
'The effectiveness of the truly national
leader consists in preventing his people from dividing their attention and
keeping it fixed on a common enemy.', Adolf Hitler, quoted in A.C. Grayling,
'The last word on nationalism', The Guardian, 26 February
2000.
'I suppose I have some reservations about
myself as a man of moral strength... It's a bad way of reading history, but
it's interesting to think, say, what would you have done in Paris under the
occupation? The truth was that any writer who stayed on in those years- De
Beauvoir, Camus, Sartre- was a collaborator, because they signed a bit of paper
saying 'I'm not a Jew' and therefore sanctioned all that followed. What would I
have done? I think I 'd have been brave in battle because people were watching,
but in those little, private decisions that really counted, I have to say, I
doubt it.' Clive James, Interview with Tim Adams, 'The famous Clive', The
Observer, 24 June 2001.
'The major problem humanity faces is not the
general development of skill and intelligence but devising a society that can
use it wisely.' Jerome Bruner, 1972.
'Our best destiny, as planetary cohabitants,
is the development of what has been called "species consciousness"- something
over and above nationalisms, blocs, religions, ethnicities. During this week of
incredulous misery, I have been trying to apply such a consciousness and such a
sensibility. Thinking of victims, the perpetrators and the near future, I felt
species grief, then species shame, then species fear.' Martin Amis, 'The first
circle of hell', The Guardian, 18 September 2001.
The curriculum of Lake County, Florida,
stipulates that teachers can only discuss other countries if they make it clear
that Americans are 'unquestionably superior' to any other nation 'now or at any
time in history.' Board of Education spokesperson Judy Pearson explained that
such an approach was felt to be necessary for young people who, 'If they felt
our land to be inferior or equal to others would have no motive to go to war
and defend our country.' (Quoted in The Guardian, 16 May
1994)
'Properly taught, it (history) can help men
to become critical and humane, just as wrongly taught, it can turn them into
bigots and fanatics.' Christopher Hill, Suggestions on the teaching of
history, Paris, UNESCO, 1953, p. 9.
''Nationhood is part of the foundation of our
society and it is more of an issue than it has been for a long time. The nature
of the state is in question. A child needs this grounding in national history
to become a citizen... as well as an appreciation of the great political events
of world history; the French and Russian Revolutions, the rise of the Nazis.'
Anthony Freeman, 'History Man comes in from the cold', The Times, 8
October 1992.
'We need to educate new migrants in
citizenship and help them to develop an understanding of our language,
democracy and culture.', David Blunkett, quoted in 'Citizenship classes for
immigrants' (concern that there is a need to promote common citizenship between
members of different communities because parts of British society have become
effectively segregated sometimes on ethnic lines)The Guardian, 26
October 2001.
'Men, it has been well said, think in herds;
it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they recover their senses
slowly, and one by one.' Charles MacKay, 1841, Extraordinary popular delusions
and the madness of crowds, quoted in Burkeman, O., 'Waiting for the
revolution', The Guardian, 5 December 2001.
'It is not a school's task to produce good
citizens any more than it is to produce Christian gentlemen. The school does
not give people their political ideals or religious faith, but the means to
discover both for themselves. Above all it gives them the scepticism so that
they leave with the ability to doubt, rather than the inclination to believe.
In this sense, a good school is subversive of current orthodoxy in politics,
religion and learning. Of course, by placing the emphasis on radical
independence of mind, we run the risk of producing, for example, an intelligent
traitor rather than a stupid patriot. But the risk of failing is much greater,
because the result may be a sham democracy in which citizens do not have the
independence to participate.' John Rae, 'On teaching independence', New
Statesman, 21 September 1973.
'Why were there so many soldiers in the
country when there wasn't a war? Why were there so many apricot trees in the
countryside but never any apricots in the shops? Why is there fog in the city
in summer? The questions were not so dangerous, and Peter had answered them
easily enough. Because they are there to protect us. Because we sell them for
hard currency that we need, because there are so many factories working at full
capacity. Angelina was always content with the answers. What stirred him most
was the innocent child's passive satisfaction with responses he knew to be
plausible evasions. Her blithe acceptance troubled him profoundly. As he lay
awake, fretting in the dark, Angelina's condition expanded until it became
symptomatic of the whole country. Could a nation lose its capacity for
scepticism, for useful doubt? What if the muscle of contradiction atrophied
from lack of exercise? Julian Barnes, 1992, The Porcupine, London, Jonathan
Cape, pp. 26-7.
If we could shrink the Earth's population to
a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining
the same, it would look something like the following:
There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both North
and south
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59 % of the entire
world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States
80 would live in sub-standard
housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death
1 would be near birth
1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer
(quoted in 'All the world's a village',
Hopkins, H. , Norwich Advertiser, 9 March 2001
'The intellectual could not be a
bystander:s(he) should be criticising, clarifying, dissenting, resisting
deriding, exposing; in brief, educating in the fullest sense of the word
as a member of the party of humanity.' Theodore Roszak, quoted in 'Higher
Education in a time of international crisis', David Bridges, Broadview,
October, 2001, Norwich, University of East Anglia.
'Official mendacity was common to all
countries, whether or not their government depended on votes. Everywhere those
in power laid hold of the means of informing people- and informed them in terms
opposite to the truth. In this process, there was very little to choose
between, for instance, the war propaganda of the Japanese government and
British ministers' assumption that the purpose of the BBC and almost all of the
free press was to state and argue the ministers' case.' Paul Foot, 'The
menacing decade', review of The Dark Valley: a panorama of the 1930s,
(Piers Bendon, London, Jonathan Cape), The Observer 3 June
2000.
'If history is not value-free, it is not a
values-system. It does not seek either to sustain or devalue tradition,
heritage or culture. It does not assume that there are shared values waiting to
be defined and demanding to be supported. It does not require us to believe
that a society's values are always valuable. If history seeks to guarantee any
of these things, it ceases to be history and becomes indoctrination.' John
Slater, 1989, The politics of history teaching, London, ULIE, pp.
15-16.
'I propose a crucial distinction which is
often insuffiently understood; that between identity and citizenship. Instead
of being so mesmerised by debates over British identity, it would be far more
productive to concentrate of renovating British citizenship, and on convincing
all the inhabitants of these islands that they are equal and valued citizens,
irrespective of whatever identity they may selct to prioritise.' Linda Colley,
'Blueprint for Britain', The Observer, 12 December 1999.
'Things may be forlorn and messed up in terms
of education and racism and health care but you've still got to demend your
freedoms.... you have to inherently believe what the country stands for, or
else you shouldn't live here.' David Schwimmer, explaining why if drafted by
the US government, he would answer the call 'without hesitation', Observer
Magazine, 25 November 2001.
'Nineteenth century historians undoubtedly
were effective politically. they deliberately stoked up the fires of
nationalism, and the consequences is that these fires are still raging today...
The historian has a practical responsibility. His practical task in our time is
to help his fellow human beings to save themselves from the social malady with
which a previous school of historians has afflicted them.' Arnold Toynbee,
Widening our historical horizon, in M. Ballard (Ed.) New movements in the
study and teaching of history, London, Temple Smith, p. 60.
'Friendship, solidarity and even kindness
rest on the notion that we share. As Aristotle said, there is no friendship
among the unequal.' Will Hutton, 'The rich aren't cleverer, just richer',
Observer, 1 April 2001.
'The essence of the independent mind lies in
not in what it thinks but how it thinks.' Christopher Hitchens, 'Letters to a
young contrarian', Guardian, 10 November 2001.
'What mattered were individual relationships,
and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying
man, could have value in itself. The proles, it suddenly occurred to him, had
remained in this condition. They were not loyal to a party or a country or an
idea, they were loyal to one another.' George Orwell, 1984, London, Penguin,
(1949), p. 153.
'Farming lies at the very core of our British
identity. It is what defines us.' Andrew O' Hagan, Guardian, 26 March
2001. (I put this one in just because it seemed a good example of a
bizarre, out of touch with reality claim to make- but is this just because I am
out of step on this?)
'The British public is often selfish,
mindless, myopic and easily swayed by the nastiest newspapers in the world
(which the people in their wisdom choose to buy). Poisonous public attitudes
terrify the government on asylum seekers or ant-tax fuel blockades.. Angry
consumers who treat government like customer services. Politicians are obliged
to defer to them at all times.' Polly Toynbee, Guardian, 12 October
2001.
The strict duty of every school is to ensure
that, by the end of their school days, every pupil has what I shall call a
grounding. By this I mean an understanding of those things which it is
necessary to understand in order to take a properly independent part in the
life of our society. To be such an independent actor, people must be able to
comprehend information of divers sorts, otherwise they are unable to make
properly independent choices about their jobs, their houses, their everyday
purchases, their travel and so on. They must be able to make sense of the
newspapers, and the spoken words of public life, since how else can they hold
independent, informed attitudes about their governors, and the political
system... And, perhaps most important of all, people must be able to express
themselves with sufficinet clarity both onpaper and in speech, to make
themselves fairly understood, since they are otherwise virtually unable to cope
with the choices which are the stuff on independent life in our society, or to
be recognised by others as possessors of an independent voice, worthy of being
heard in its own right.' Oliver Letwin, 1989, 'Grounding comes first', in B.
Moon, P. Murphy and J. Raynor (eds) Policies for the curriculum, London,
Hodder and Stoughton.
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