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.