The end of a tyrant

It's been an interesting year. A tyrant ruler, who originally came to power because he was a soldier, holds on to power for an entire generation, dies in misery and degradation. He leaves a legacy of state-of-the-art glistening buildings, places of worship, military installations, megastructures to boost trade, opulent palaces for his own personal use complete with underground bunkers. He also leaves a legacy of hatred among his subjects. In his final days he uses foreign mercenary soldiers, to carry out massacres of innocent people, in a vain attempt to cling to power. I could be talking about Colonel Gaddafi, but equally I could be talking about Herod the Great, the ruler of Palestine when Jesus was born.

The stories of Jesus' birth are full of characters, Mary and Joseph, innkeepers, shepherds, wise men, King Herod, a donkey, camels, assorted farm animals, and a supporting cast of angels, soldiers, villagers, and those, like Mary's cousin Elizabeth, who were simply and quietly waiting for God to act. But the colourfulness and drama of the stories should not distract or cushion us from the real events they tell us about.

'Long time ago in Bethlehem' is in some ways a very misleading lyric. Cavemen were a long time ago; dinosaurs were a long time ago; the beginning of planet earth was a long time ago. But Jesus' birth was, as it were, yesterday, in comparison with those events. And the very similar stories of Herod and of Gaddafi are a reminder that human nature does not change in a few hundred years. These events didn't happen that long ago at all.

Nor was it a long way away. Even in Roman times goods could pass through Palestine, to Britain in the West and China in the East, and today we have constant reminders we are all part of one world. Nor was the place of Jesus' birth a quiet backwater where nothing happened. For a start it was right in the middle of the trade routes I've just mentioned. It was also a place of political ferment and revolution. The year of Jesus' birth was probably the one when Roman security forces, fed up with constant Jewish rebellions, swept down from Syria, brutally suppressing rebellion - and emphasising their point by crucifying 2000 of the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

A generation after Jesus' death the four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John recorded the most important life in History, and set about trying to explain it. Only two of them describe Jesus' actual birth. Matthew writes about Jesus' Jewish heritage, about King Herod but mainly about the Kingdom of Heaven, as well as telling us about the visit of the Wise Men. Luke begins his account by introducing us to the Jewish people like Zechariah who were faithful to God's promises and were waiting patiently and expectantly to see what God would do; and then he begins his account of Jesus' birth by referring to the Roman Emperor Augustus, who was was himself being hailed, or hailing himself, as the Saviour of the world. Mark, perhaps because he's well aware people know the nativity story already, doesn't write about Jesus' birth at all, but goes straight into what Jesus did as a man – healing people, teaching, performing miracles - and dying on the cross. And John, writing years later, begins his gospel by making absolutely clear that the man Jesus who came into the world was also the son of God who made the universe, died for the world, rose from the dead, and even now rules over us, with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Let's enjoy the story of Christmas, and move on from the magic of the story to what it means; and always remember it's part of a much bigger story. 

Daily Telegraph article about 'Exam Board Cheating'

For some reason my comment to the Daily Telegraph article and Leader didn't 'take'.  So I wrote a comment in 'The Guardian' instead:
The issue here is the fairness. Pupils shouldn't be given an unfair advantage. In the bad old days this was ensured by Exam boards not giving any detailed information about what their questions would be about and the way they needed to be answered. Examination syllabuses fitted on one page of A4. The 'best' teachers, from the point of view of getting pupils through exams, were the ones who could predict what questions would come up. It was unfair on thousands of pupils, and wasteful in terms of not producing educated young people.
'Specifications', as they are now called, are A4 booklets of a hundred pages or so. They are very complicated, and, to make matters worse, change far too often, i.e. when the government gets a new idea into its head. However, at least the details are now transparent, as a result of which you don't have to have special, privileged, knowledge of the Examination system in order to prepare your pupils for the examination.
Seminars are therefore a vital means, though not the only one, whereby teachers can get a more accurate view of what the examinations will be like. They used to be arranged by local authorities, and the commercialisation of schools and the examination system is largely to blame for the present system's examples of unfairness. However, moral outrage at 'The Daily Telegraph's' 'shock revelations' doesn't really help.

Human Rights in Africa

Nigeria has just passed legislation making homosexual marriage illegal.  However, Nigerians are aware this doesn't go down well in the West.  Hence this article by Willie-Nwobu in 'Leadership', a magazine published in Abuja, attacking David Cameron's threat to cut aid to countries which do not respect human rights: 

http://allafrica.com/stories/201112010518.html 

This was my reply to the article:

I understand your outrage at the British Prime Minister's insensitive attitude at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Britons often display a patronising attitude towards Africa, which will probably continue until Africa attains greater political and economic strength. However, this in turn depends upon African nations developing a more science-based society. This also applies to attitudes regarding sexuality, where prejudice unfortunately carries more weight than what your own scientists and medical researchers have to say on the subject: to the best of my knowledge none of them are telling you that on the basis of their research homosexuality is evil. Nor do ours - rather what they tell us is that human sexuality, like intelligence and many other human phenomena such as how we perform in examinations, can be seen as a bell curve. This means that while most people might agree with what you are saying, from their own experience, a minority will not. This is where human rights come in, and the ability of a society to tolerate minority views. You don't have to agree with homosexuality: but it is highly important in modern society to allow rights to those with whom you disagree. There is a good deal of evidence that social and economic progress go hand-in-hand with how tolerant a society is: with most European countries this is axiomatic, and this may explain David Cameron's apparent insensitivity (and, perhaps ironically, a lack of tolerance to a widely held African belief.)

Referring to the Bible to underpin anti-homosexuality legislation is highly questionable. Taking the Bible as a whole as our authority it now seems that our ideas about slavery and about the status of women were wrong in the light of freedom in Christ. Many bible experts are telling us that we may be wrong in judging homosexuality as evil.

A Bible in every school from Michael Gove

Derek Wilson, in his recent book about the Authorised Version '"The people's bible: the remarkable story of the King James Version", makes clear that as far as James l was concerned the production of an Authorised Version was an exercise in religious and political repression. The whole idea was that all the other versions, such as the Geneva Bible used by Shakespeare, would be replaced by an authorised version which had no nasty marginal glosses attacking his bishops, and would have lots of Latinised words making it suitable for worship. Surprisingly, it actually took about a century for the Authorised Version to drive the others off the market. Could Gove be the wisest fool in Christendom? 

The argument about teaching History

'Dr David Starkey rarely disappoints as a controversialist, so it is no surprise he thinks most of Britain is a white monoculture – "unmitigatingly white", he told a conference this week in London. The debate had been about the national curriculum, which Starkey said needed a "serious focus on our own culture". '
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/18/ian-jack-teaching-history-british-empire?

The debate about the national curriculum is based, in my opinion, on a false premise - that there is something seriously wrong with the teaching of History in our schools. In the summer of last year Michael Gove looked under the bonnet of National Curriculum History, shook his head, gave a low whistle, and announced that a simple service would not do and that we needed an entirely new vehicle. As every car manufacturer knows, it's the dream rather than the vehicle that needs selling, so he immediately approached three highly successful manufacturers for ideas, Ferguson, Schama, and Starkey. Gove chose Schama, who on the surface seemed to offer the same kind of flashy red sports model as the other two, but who then surprised everybody by going out and talking to both the technicians who produce the vehicles, and, even more surprisingly, consumers themselves [i.e. children, and, for all I know, parents.]

It is interesting that there have been very few contributions from History teachers to these comments on Ian Jack's excellent article. The reason for this is that they are far too busy dealing with an ever increasing pace of change, such as recent changes in the examination system which have wrecked modular courses they have spent so long preparing. (Incidentally modular courses, for instance at AS, are the very 'vehicles' which allow young adults to engage with the more sophisticated arguments to be found in some of the comments above. They are also much more like the real problems we have to think about and research in the workplace.)

But going back to Mr Gove's concern, voiced at a Conservative Party Conference and then at a book fair last year, that our children were being short-changed with regard to their (English) historical heriatage: the concern is simply misplaced. There is nothing wrong with the History National Curriculum originally set up by Mrs Thatcher's government, or at any rate by the committee of educationalists and teachers the government appointed. It provides a good framework, allowing teachers to devise their own schemes of work and lessons.

If there is a problem it is simply that the curriculum time available for History has been relentlessly and progressively squeezed, both in Primary and Secondary Schools.

The presentation of a coherent narrative of British History probably dropped out of schools some years ago, but recent trends, such as skipping a year of Key Stage 3 in order to prepare for GCSEs, have suddenly made things worse.

Ironically Academies do less History – an 'unintended consequence' perhaps.

Reflections from my living room

The word 'reflections' can suggest not just thinking, but thinking deeply about things. Thinking, and thinking deeply, can be two very different activities, the one involving, say, solving a crossword puzzle, the other involving thinking about the universe, which, as someone once pointed out, is very big indeed! Some people deliberately try to avoid thinking too much, for example by not watching or listening to the News.

But just sitting in our own living room minding our own business can itself raise ethical questions. Did the materials inside your mobile phone or flatscreen television come from reputable suppliers, or was it dug out by viciously exploited workers in darkest Africa? Has your buying fairtrade coffee made the problem of exploited coffee farmers go away? What about the leather in your sofa, cheap cashmere sweaters, cotton goods or laptops produced by child labour, or children's toys packaged courtesy of virgin wood from Sumatra? If we shie away from thinking about issues like these, we've probably given up also on the bigger issues – like too many people in the world, too few resources (even simple ones, like water), and climate change.

Pessimism, or even cynicism, has become a way of thinking, perhaps even a way of life. Any teacher will tell you that conveying an optimistic view of life to children and young people often goes against the grain of what society as a whole thinks. It is all too easy to believe that family life is disintegrating, communities are becoming uncaring, bullying is rife in the workplace, and those of whom we expect high standards, such as bankers, politicians, and journalists, are all in it just for the money.

I recently read a university magazine article by a leading industrialist predicting that the present world (probably receiving its 7 billionth inhabitant this year) will collapse by the end of the century. However, he assured his readers that the few who survived (apparently his dinner-party guests) would be able to live a wonderfully fullfilling life, with a life-span extended hundreds of years by ever-improving science and technology! (I'm not making this up – he even had a 'Sir' in front of his name.) The gentleman (or should that be 'knight' if he's a 'sir') seemed to have forgotten the founding Christian principles of his own university and the society it serves.

As Christians we are realistic about whose world this is (Psalm 24 v.1) and our own place in it (John 3 v.16). Our salvation covers the past, the present, and the future. We also believe in a God who loves all of us (Luke 12 v.6 above). This gives us a profound optimism that as long as we stay in partnership with the God who made us we can look forward to a better world for everyone. 

[My thanks to 'The Guardian' for the specific examples of unethical household objects]

What shall we tell the children about evolution?

An article in 'Christianity Today' http://www.christiantoday.com/article/evangelical.school.gets.the.go.ahead.in.nottingham/28446.htm invites us to get excited about creeping creationism: an Academy is planning as part of its Christian ethos to commend Creationism. However, the school's version of what's happening is different: http://www.eccnewark.org.uk/ It suggests that, if this was the plan, the school's managers have had a rethink. Actually the school concerned - 'Everyday Champions Academy'- appears to be under siege by parents, government inspectors, and Humanist lobbyists before it's even opened its doors, which is a pity.

But as the initial article got me excited, I'll share my opinion on the wider issues anyway. A good book to read on this is Denis Alexander's 'Creation or Evolution' - and not just because I knew him at University. He is at pains to point out, alongside his own convictions as a Christian and a scientist, that there are a number of different points of view on Evolution and on the Bible's account of creation, and how they might relate to each other.

There is, at the very least, a distinction between 'Creationsim' and 'Intelligent Design'. Basically Creationism appears to many so absurd that it is difficult to take it seriously. A few years ago some maths materials appeared which included a reference to the creation '6000 years ago' - a young earth indeed! Having said that, I have tried to point out, to a Christian who has a further degree in mathematics, the mismatch with History, Geology and Astronomy this produces - but to no avail. The arguments for Intelligent Design are more subtle: they appear absurd to most scientists, but not necessarily to the rest of us. My own rejection of it is not based on the scientific arguments - whose details I don't understand - but on the fact that most scientists reject it.

Personally, I was converted to 'Evolution' (from a previous position of not-having-thought-about-it-much) when at about the age of 10 my mum took me to the Natural History Museum. However, the pamphlet I came away with puzzled me, specifically its maps, which showed the continents in different geological eras, including, for example, an unbelievably vast Gondwanaland that included the South Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, as well as the continents of South America and Africa. Some years later 'the theory' of continental drift mysteriously became 'scientific fact', and I realised that the map was wrong, and that the areas marked as 'Land in Cambrian, but now Sea' were never land.

How should Evolution and Creationism be presented to children and young people in schools. The resignation of Michael Reiss 3 years ago - http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/sep/17/evolution.controversiesinscience

- shows how fraught this discussion has become. But the idea that young people should be excluded from this debate strikes me as dangerous. Better to give give Creationism and I.D. a mention at some point in the curriculum, and allow young people a chance to discuss them.     

Riot response

    I was quite surprised that the most effective words that came out of the riots were spoken by Tariq Jahan, a grieving father, and a muslim. Christians need to be more open-minded. It is all too easy to get the wrong end of the stick and to take offence, just like the Pharisees who were always taking offence at Jesus, in fact. Jesus wanted his disciples to be more open minded and thoughtful than the Pharisees, and found himself saying to them (i.e. the leaders - not the rank-and-file!): “Are you still so dull?”

    Often, when we are trying to say the right thing, we say the wrong thing: in 1948 the US ambassador to the United Nations urged the warring Arabs and Jews to end their hostilities 'like good Christians'. Some time later President Regan gave a speech trying to appeal to the third world. He told them: 'The United States has much to offer the third world war' - and he repeated this 9 times in his speech. It's not just making a slip of the tongue: all too often we make entirely wrong judgements. In my time as a teacher it became quite clear to me that most of the time I picked on the wrong pupil who I thought was being naughty. It always turned out it was the pupil sitting next to him who was the real culprit!

This very human capacity for blunder has been well illustrated by the recent riots, and by reactions to the riots. On Newsnight last week the historian David Starkey, who has acquired something of a reputation for wisdom - quite wrongly in my opinion - gestured towards one of the other Newsnight guests, Owen Jones, who wrote a book about chavs, and said: "What has happened is that a substantial section of the chavs that you wrote about have become black." It was a galactically stupid thing to say.

    The same principle of misunderstanding applies to religion. In Jesus' time the key text was the 10 commandments, which Jesus himself pointed out boiled down to one clear moral agenda of loving God and loving one's neighbour. But the Pharisees insisted on the observance of an extensive collection of instructions, which they themselves had cobbled together, which set out precise rules of behaviour, sometimes overiding the God-given moral code. So Jesus challenged them: 'Why do you break the commands of God with your tradition?' The Pharisees had just not thought it through, and had become inconsistent in how they applied their faith. Jesus even had to point out to his own disciples that they were missing the point that Isaiah had made:

"These people honour me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me.

They worship me in vain;

their teachings are merely human rules."

    But I believe that the same charge could be laid against us. A great 20th Century Christian writer wrote: ‘To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, and to devote the will to the purpose of God.' These were fine and thought-provoking words. The problem was that they didn't and don't just apply to worship but to the whole of the Christian life. The reverence expressed here retreated to one day in the week, and was regarded, even by Christians, as irrelevant to the other six.

    So then, at the risk of enormous blunder, I would like to suggest that one of the causes not just of the riots but of the general malaise in society that preceded it is our wrong-thinking about money, as individuals, as a society, but also as Christians. The principle of what has been described as 'Possessive individualism' - i.e. earning money whatever it takes - is so deeply embedded in our culture that we take it for granted. Yet putting the acquisition of money or things before community, country or even family began a couple of hundred years ago, after a deliberate rejection of Christian values, and also, I might add, of specific biblical teaching. When we read our bibles, we need to be prepared to take in what the Word of God says, and not just what suits us.

Mr Gove and the teaching of History

Sean Lang is to be congratulated on being appointed to the committee set up by Michael Gove, the Education Minister, to reform History teaching. Sean's 'Better History Group' has a clear agenda http://www.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home/faculties/alss/deps/hss/news_and_events/better_history.html

and is certainly one of the contributions that needs to be heard if History is to survive as a school subject.

Having myself retired after 30 years teaching History in secondary schools, my interest (apart from a personal bee in my bonnet about the almost total disappearance of World History from the curriculum) is that we are about to make a terrible mistake. Who 'we' are in this context is a moot point. A readable left-wing account of what has been happening in History teaching can be found here:

http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=704&issue=129

but I assume is not one of the points of view that will be heard by Mr Gove's committee.

The last 'reform' of History by a Conservative government, at the time of the introduction of the National Curriculum in the late 1980's, was characterised by an attempt to confine History curriculum topics to pre-modern History. I think it was a 30-year rule that Kenneth Clarke had in mind, at a time when if a teenagers' 'free market' was applied this would have ruled out much of the History they were interested in.

The launch of the current reform has been characterised by a demand for the teaching and learning of 'The Facts' (apparently to counter all that touchy-feely Left Wing opinion) and for greater emphasis on 'Our Island Story' and 'The British Empire'. Unlike the previous reform, which in the end was carried out competently enough if unimaginatively, by a committee of teachers and educationalists, this one was heralded by the appointment of historian and TV History presenter Niall Ferguson. As an article in 'The Guardian' put it: 'Niall Ferguson, the British historian most closely associated with a rightwing, Eurocentric vision of western ascendancy, is to work with the Conservatives to overhaul history in schools.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/30/niall-ferguson-school-curriculum-role

By the time the committee presents its work (2014?) it is possible that a balanced scheme of work will appear, but at the moment I have a number of concerns. Many of these are mentioned in the 'International Socialism' article referred to above.

History teachers in Secondary Schools, however, like to 'get on with the job', and like to believe they will always be free to teach what they wish - except for those rare occasions when an OFSTED inspector is actually sitting at the back of their classroom with a notebook! In any case, many are simply pleased that Mr Gove has a passion for History and wants to preserve it as a distinct subject.

There are several things they ought to be very concerned about. One is the balance of topics that has been suggested. World History, on paper part of the existing curriculum but in practice noticeable for its absence, is likely to be totally eclipsed by 'The British Empire' and 'The rise of the West' - and no, these two topics are really not the same as World History; the three need to be taught together. Even then is this a balanced overall view of History if there is not a regional History - the Middle East or China perhaps? Then there's European History, and local History, all be be woven into a convincing overall narrative. Oh yes, and it's got to be chronological.

The need for all the different strands of 'Our Island Story' to be visible is also important. However, I am not clear how this is going to happen. I suspect the strand that includes the Tolpuddle Martyrs is going to be rather thin; my first reaction to an early list of topics I saw, for example, had me wondering where the Suez Crisis was.

There is a tension between teaching 'The Facts' of History and making sure that youngsters are proud of their English/British heritage. It is a tension that has to be managed in the classroom, not in a syllabus or scheme of work.

A classic example of this is how teachers should teach slavery. Michael Gove insists that one of the main reasons for teaching History is to give children pride in their heritage. Realising that there is a difficulty here in relation to slavery, he has pointed out that slavery was already going on in Africa, and also that it was the Royal Navy that played a leading role in ending it. This ignores the fact that Britain played the leading role in the Atlantic slave trade in the first place, making a fortune out of it, and finally abandoning it when its value was beginning to wane. Nor is it helpful, when you're trying to cast a list of British heroes that part of Lord Nelson's early career was devoted to the preservation of Britain's slave plantations from the French. African chiefs confused the rights and wrongs of their own slavery with that of the much worse European-style slavery practised in the Americas, but we shouldn't. If a History teacher wants to end the topic of slavery by showing the 'Amistad' video clip, of a British warship destroying a West African slavery fortress, that is up to him or her. But already there's an implication that those History teachers who think that some of our national history is shameful will be given a very hard time.

In fact I don't think the 'British Empire' should be a major part of the History Curriculum at all. British India began with the conquest of Bengal in 1757, and the devastating famine in Bengal in 1770 was a direct result of East India Company policy. (Perhaps those in the Company who argued that they should concentrate on trade and avoid conquest should have been listened to.) British India ended with the massacres of the Partition, where the 200 year policy of divide-and-rule probably played a part. A few years before that, in 1943, Bengal suffered another devastating famine, which followed an order to raise the price of food in order to help deny it to the enemy should he invade.

No doubt if teachers read more Niall Ferguson they might find some positive things to say about the Empire, but I worry that as we get nearer to the time when the new curriculum is published they might actually be under pressure to read his books in order to do this!

Then there's the issue of teaching facts and knowledge, giving young people 'the big story', and ending the emphasis on Historical skills. This should not be an EITHER/OR situation. There is a genuine need for an over-arching narrative to tie History together. But a glance at all the topics involved shows that this is not easy, and busy History departments or History teachers have had to come up with their own narratives and their own over-arching stories, and with diminishing curriculum time in which to do it. I suspect it was almost entirely the time factor which gradually removed connecting narratives. With respect to Simon Schama's story-telling skills this should remain the classroom teacher's problem, not his.

Simon Schama is the Historian/Presenter who was prevailed upon to lead Michael Grove's History group. I fear that he will preside over an unbalanced crew. So far I've seen no sign that the Schools History Project, an important strand in the teaching of History over the last 30 years or so, is represented at all. (The fact that an article in 'The Sunday Express' http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/226070/Return-to-traditional-history-is-in-danger- could confuse Sean Lang with 'New History' advocates would certainly seem to suggest this.)

Finally, there's the Empathy issue. Empathy, according to one dictionary definition, is 'the power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person's feelings'. Put like that - almost a definition of being human - it is startling that its use as an 'Attainment Target' or anything else was forbidden in the National Curriculum. Every historian and everybody who thinks about History uses empathy all the time. Something has gone wrong with the History debate if the word needed to be removed from Educational vocabulary.

Will the British Empire inspire the young?

   The reform of History teaching that is being mooted by the Coalition Government will probably result in 'The History of the British Empire' being put into pride of place.  'Pride' would also be the operative word, as the Secretary of State for Education, Mr Gove, is keen that youngsters should acquire pride in their country's History by learning about the British Empire. 
   There are problems with this.  There is a growing gap between what Historians have discovered about the past and what the general public believe about it.  Most people's ideas are based on out-of-date information they learned at school.  On the whole only History teachers of AS/A2 and IB level keep up with what academic historians have found out. 
   The History of the British Empire has been re-written over the last 20 years, particularly by the historians of countries which Britain used to rule.  Modern British schoolchildren, far from being inspired by the whole enterprise of Empire, might well end up being disgusted and disillusioned.  They might well wonder what gives one people the right to invade and take over another.  I believe Mr Gove, himself a History lover, believes that the Royal Navy played an important part in ridding the world of the slave trade in the 19th Century.  There is some truth in that, but overall the biggest carrier of slaves across the Atlantic Ocean in the first place was Britain, and there is a very strong argument that Britain only changed its stance on the slave trade and on slavery itself as its economic value changed.  Wilberforce, whom I personally admire, was not quite the hero he is cracked up to be.
   I am not for one moment advocating that we abandon teaching of the British Empire.  But I  don't think the balance sheet comes out in the way that Mr Gove and some of his chosen curriculum reformers believe.  And crucially, if world history is to be taught as part of the History Curriculum, it is vital it is not taught through the distorting lens of Empire.
   'Mr Gove and ... his chosen curriculum reformers' are the heart of the matter.  British History is not one story, but many often competing stories, and historians argue with each other with their rival stories.  This reflects the reality of the state of our knowledge, and it would be intellectually dishonest to ignore it.  To re-write History as though there is only one story would also be very dangerous; children will be very quick to pick up on being fed one particular set of facts and not another and take their queries home to their parents.
   Mr Gove would be wise to have a few prominent historians of a different political hue join his committee. 
    

Uganda and the death of David Kato

A letter appeared in The Guardian yesterday.  It is a real shame that the churches in Uganda could not get their act together on this and realise that whatever Scripture says this is a human rights issue.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/11/gay-rights-in-africa                                                                             

Departure of Secretary of State for Education

  I thought these were heartening words from the county where I did my teacher-training, in the context of Education Ministers who get it wrong:

'I am reminded of the famous Ted Wragg story about Kenneth Clarke’s Departure from the department for Education . After the cabinet reshuffle a lady teacher rang the office at the DES insisting to speak to Ken Clarke. “I’m sorry he no longer works here”, came the reply. A few days later came another call, from the same lady teacher, equally insistent. The courteous reply to the same question came in the form “I’m sorry Mr Clarke no longer works at the DES”. The following week came a third call from the same teacher, posing the same question just as insistently. This time the receptionist replied , “Sorry, Mr Clarke is no longer reponsible for education. Hang on, haven’t I told you this before?”. “Yes, replied the teacher, I know, but I just love hearing those words”. '

http://www.blogs.keystagehistory.co.uk/2010/12/new-history-curriculum-for-2013-and-a-funny-story-for-christmas/

 

Mr Gove and the re-writing of History

One of the characteristics of a military dictatorship, in the early stages, is the dramatic announcement that the dictator will sweep away a corrupt system; and examples of corruption are then produced - examples that are sufficiently misleading you would get prosecuted if you tried to make an advertisement out of them! One of the purposes of this initial approach is to instil a degree of fear into the situation. So while I wouldn't interpret Mr Gove's acquisition of scores of dictatorial powers over education as a 'dictatorship' it does rather go against the spirit of the Constitutional History I thought we were being asked to teach.

Then there's book-burning. I think it is highly likely to happen if Mr Gove gets his way - though mainly metaphorically speaking. This is indeed what happened when the National Curriculum was introduced, when the disposal of old textbooks became a real problem for the school caretaker at my school. It was 'out with the old and in with the new'. I am still extremely grateful to Heinemann for producing a textbook on the Romans, complete with AT's and tests, in record time - vital for colleagues for whom 'it was not their period'.

History was 're-written' by the introduction of the National Curriculum. The less prescriptive version produced a couple of years ago was no doubt a belated attempt to allow more flexibility, but the damage was already done. Now we're in danger of another revision. The Secretary of State after all did began by implying our children had been betrayed by current History teaching.

What dropped out of History were many of the interesting bits which couldn't be fitted into the National Curriculum. In some cases it was the pet project of a head of department who was interested in, say, trains. In others it was massive topic areas. For example before the N.C. a good deal of World History and Modern History was being taught. Modern History was saved after a row, but World History, in the sense of non-European World History, disappeared in practice though not on paper, something OFSTED complained about. British History alone was safe.

We await the deliberations of Mr Gove's kitchen cabinet with bated breath. And that is precisely the problem. I wouldn't want any of them actually in my classroom, except perhaps in a consultative capacity. The best schemes of work come from ordinary bread-and-butter History teachers, whether heads of department or teams.

Cameron's definition of multiculturalism

The Prime Minister made a very strange reference http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/speeches-and-transcripts/2011/02/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference-60293 to multiculturalism in a speech about security issues over the weekend.  He said it had failed.  To many people multiculturalism means a society that tolerates several (or more) cultures, and is a useful way of describing our society in the 2010's as opposed to what it was like in the 1950's.  To say 'multiculturalism has failed' may have been intended to herald a more focused attempt to deal with Islamist extremism in the UK.  But for many, and not just muslims, it will be taken to mean that the government will no longer tolerate several or more cultures, but only one.  Apart from removing grants from muslim organisations that aren't monocultural enough, what new policy is Mr Cameron offering?    Reading the comments in 'The Guardian' this morning it is clear his speech has signalled the acceptability of turning fear and prejudice into politics, and perhaps (God help us) into laws.  I do hope and pray that Mr Cameron really does know where he is going with this issue, and this was just a bad speech.

Murder of David Kato

 Comment in RFI story on the death of David Kato

Fri Jan 28 11:00:39 2011

I am so sorry to hear of the death of David Kato. I was even more sorry to hear that a number of people have died in a similar manner, and also in Mukono. I taught in the Senior School in Mukono from 1966 to 1967. The year I went back to England they repealed the anti-homosexual law regarding adults, and this has benefitted the country in all sorts of ways, for example by removing the possibility of blackmail. It never ceases to surprise me that a civilized country like Uganda hasn't done the same.

normthestorm          
The Guardian Comment

27 January 2011 11:25PM

I am sorry to hear of the death of David Kato. I was a teacher in the Senior School in Mukono from 1966/67, employed locally, but introduced to the school through the Anglican Church of Uganda. I am also sorry to see that there have apparently been a spate of killings of homosexual people in Mukono. The colonial laws on homosexuality which Uganda inherited at Independence need to be re-thought. By coincidence it was the year that I left Uganda that the laws against homosexuality in England began to be abolished. It really is time Uganda did the same. They are essentially British laws, not African. However, to bring Uganda's laws into the 21st Century lawmakers need to listen to the academics at Makerere, not the 'Rolling Stone'.

What History teaching needs

"We don't need a big wing, or a little wing - we just need pilots!" So said Lord Olivier, playing Sir Hugh Dowding in the film re-enactment of The Battle of Britain. He said it with a world-weary sigh, which no doubt accurately reflected the feelings of the Air Chief Marshal.

I think a similar thought idea must have crossed the minds of history teachers recently, as the Air-Marshals of School History square up for a fight. It has certainly crossed mine, now happily retired from 30 years of teaching History in a Comprehensive school.

Mr Gove has made an important contribution by recognising the value of History in the school curriculum, but he is now in danger of stirring up a heated and unecessary debate.

History teaching doesn't need just the facts, or just the skills, or even just the knowledge. It just needs the time to teach it, and good History Teachers who know all about teaching a subject which is both conservative and subversive.  Advice from people like Sean Lang and Chris Culpin - who know what a good syllabus and the inside of a classroom look like - is also needed.

Mr Gove and the History Curriculum - The story continues

"One of the problems that we have at the moment is that in the history curriculum we only have two names [of historical figures]", Mr Gove announced on the "Today" programme this morning.  The same article on the BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12227491 quotes earlier pronouncements:   "At the Conservative Party Conference, Mr Gove said it was a "tragedy of our time" that children were growing up ignorant of the history of the United Kingdom.
"Children are given a mix of topics at primary, a cursory run through Henry VIII and Hitler at secondary and many give up the subject at 14, without knowing how the vivid episodes of our past became a connected narrative," he said. Mr Gove has already asked the historian Simon Schama to advise on how British history could be "put at the heart of a revised national curriculum" ".

Simon Schama is, of course, a brilliant historian, with a way of weaving fascinating narratives.  But he probably wouldn't last five minutes in a Comeprehensive School classroom, and even in an Academy students would probably switch off after ten.   History teaching is a very different art from being a historian, and I would be more confident that Mr Gove was on the right lines if he said he was consulting history teachers, history inspectors, and history publishers.  (And if we must have a TV personality as a figurehead I would in any case recommend the more down-to-earth Michael Wood.)

Mr Gove is wrong about the History Curriculum in a number of respects.  The most important respect is his misunderstanding of the place of narrative.  Narrative involves many things.  It may be the teacher telling a story like the Battle of Hastings.  It may be that a kind of 'Big Story' is revealed when a class follows a theme, such as the development of technology over a couple of centuries, during the course of a whole term's teaching. 

It may be simply presenting a series of dates, like the dates of English Monarchs that used to be found on pencils, rulers, and the back of exercise books. However, one thing it cannot be is a set of facts about our history that we can all agree on.  There are, at any rate outside Conservative Party Conferences, competing narratives of British History, and indeed of all History.  Making sense of competing narratives - for example the story of kings and the story of peasants - is something that history teachers are pretty good at, and they do a very good job of preparing young people to make sense of an increasingly confusing world. 

In fact 'knowing how the vivid episodes of our past became a connected narrative' i.e. why some historians manage to put forward particular theories of the past such as the importance of individuals, the influence of Geography or Economics, or ideas such as 'The British Empire was a good thing' are precisely the kind of very sophisticated arguments that young people are introduced to by the study of History.