RT @libcon Liberal Conspiracy » The Miseducation of Michael Gove http://bit.ly/43k5w3 – Too true.

What we should do is combine the teaching of British history (preferably from the Romans up until at least WWII) with the sort of skills you mention. Maybe I’m biased as someone who did history at university but it does strike me as worrying that many people don’t have a basic knowledge of this country’s history. You don’t have to be a member of the Churchill cult to know who he is but there’s a disturbing number of people who don’t. It wouldn’t be necessary to teach children the names of every single King and Queen but certainly there should be some coverage of the more “important” ones e.g. William I and Henry VIII. I did Tudors and Stuarts when I was 9-10 (back in 1993-94) and found it all very interesting. I presume this is still taught?

RichardJ

Well said.

I can not think on any society except our own which does not see the teaching of its own history as a vital part of any education. Whether it is the tales of Gilgamesh still told in Bagdad bars, or Americans learning about the Mayflower, history is an essential part of our identity.

The conspiricy theorist in me tends to think that the history-is-bunk’ers in this debate know that and are happy to see it fade as they think they can remake society in their mould

1. In the long term what do names involved in WW2 matter? This, I feel, reflects the point made in the OP that what matters is what is learned. What kids should be taking away from the history lessons for WW2 is NOT that the war ended in 1945, nor that Churchill specifically led the country. The lessons are those of fascism, the dangers of removal of democracy through authoritarianism, genocide.

When it comes to our kings the specific names do not matter, what matters is the transitions the country took under Henry VIII with regards to state versus religion, the shaping of our nation through crusades, civil war and wars with our now friends and neighbours.

People get FAR too hung up on history in schools for the factual recall, the reason of course being that it is only the facts that you can assess easily in a 1 hour exam. Ask people who Churchill is, yes there may be those that don’t know. The real question is whether they know what the second world war was fought over and why it was a formative world event…I hope (and wager) that more people would know the answer to that.

Good article Neil, well said.

Well I am not sure if Gove quite gets it, but it is actually the whole notion of a set of central planners being able to draw up a national curriculum (“skillz” based or otherwise) that desperately needs to be put to bed. Education experts can no more predict what skill sets are going to be useful in the future than anyone else now. And I think we also need to challenge the idea that there is some sort of trade-off between and content and skills which often seems to operate as a tacit assumption within the debate.

Subjects with really counter-intuitive skill and content sets can often turn out to be the most useful as well. For example, latin and greek is frequently derided as being useless (amongst some Ofsted inspectors especially, I have noticed) but it was classicists who often made the best programmers. This was not because it was “useful” to know what Tacitus thought of Nero, but because in piecing together what he thought, people accidentally pick up exactly the sort of way of thinking and skills that later prove useful in a completely different area of work.

History is only relevant insofar as it has practical applications today. Thus it matters not a goddamn thing what the names of Kings and Queens were (though as a history teacher I know them all, incl dates, from well before Edward Confessor – because I’m that much of a geek). What matters is how historical narrative is appropriated for political ends – and right now, the government have a monopoly on such appropriation. Which is wrong.

“History is only relevant insofar as it has practical applications today.”

That is exactly that kind of narrowly pragmatic attitude that ought to be challenged in education. You have a good point about government appropriation of history though, only I fear that is an unfortunate element of the government having a near monopoly on education as it stands.

Why shouldn’t education be pragmatic?

If you think that the great days of the liberal arts, when half the politicians were classicist-trained lawyers, was completely abstract then you are wrong.

Living in a democracy is about debate – and debate can and should extend to every subject. Thus every subject that has a practical application in those arguments – from Quantum Theory to the evolution of ethics – should be taught. But we should not teach them within the narrow confines of dates-and-people, because that is not how they will be applied.

In fact, that method of teaching is just another ideological construct.

Well I think education and knowledge has both intrinsic as well as instrumental value. Even if you disagree, I would argue that the pragmatist cannot easily tell what is likely to be useful, or what method of learning might actually turn out to be useful. For example, the trade-off between names and dates and having a wider understanding has never really been demonstrated. Indeed, the use of chronology might well be the best way to solidify more important knowledge in things like history.

Nick: Does the fact that Einstein came up with the thoery of relativity matter one bit in the understanding of the physics? No, it doesn’t. Name’s, inventors, dates…they DON’T matter, ever. You can claim what you like about personal perspectives or views but I would like to hear one coherent argument as to why kids in the future (say, 1000 years in the future) will have a lesser understanding and education about the second world war because they are likely not to learn the name of our prime minister of the time.

If it were actually important in the capacity of something other than providing an easily identifiable exam question, why aren’t we also being taught the make up of the British parliament of the time, the name of the head of the army, the name of the inventor of the spitfire, the names of the german leaders in charge of attacks in France?

It’s just irrelevant detail, who’s only relevancy can come in providing markers within our knowledge for the purpose of education.. “Churchill…hmmm, I think that’s linked to World War 2, so I’ll write about world war 2″

Liberal Conspiracy » The Miseducation of Michael Gove: About the author: Neil Robertson is a regular contributo.. http://bit.ly/tA8N4

Well if you think of scientific knowledge in terms of historical paradigms, as more recent philosophies of science at least tend to take seriously, then it might be very relevant indeed. How do you know what is significant about the theory of relativity without putting in the context of what has come before or after it. You can’t really teach science ahistorically without losing the interesting facets of how scientific knowledge develops. And you cannot know whether that has no relevance whatsoever for developments in the future.

On the Winston Churchill issue, I haven’t actually said anything so far, but I happen to believe that personalities can and do matter in history. That is what makes it different, as a subject, from sociology. If you don’t know who the key players are, what their personal backgrounds are, you are missing out on part of the explanation for historical events.

Humanity thinks in terms of narratives. We’ve lost that, turned something that is ultimately a fascinating study of a human condition into dullness. Heroes and villians are vital to understand moral responsiblities and deal with vital issues of how we live our lives now by comparing moral dissonance. To just look at non controversial history and a marxist look at how joes bloggs lived is pointless is educating people and thinking where they came frm as a society.

11. No-one’s saying that knowing about characters isn’t interesting, does this mean it’s relevant in the terms of those that are saying history is important to understand modern day society? I can’t see how.

Nothing in Michael Gove’s history curriculum about (late) government intervention in the course of the 19th century to improve standards of education in Britain? All very curious. I propose the urgent inclusion of this topic:

“We have noted a substantial body of original research . . . which found that stagnant or declining literacy underlay the ‘revolution’ of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. . . Britain in 1850 was the wealthiest country in the world but only in the second rank as regards literacy levels. [Nick] Crafts has shown that in 1870 when Britain was world economic leader, its school enrolment ratio was only 0.168 compared with the European norm of 0.514 and ‘Britain persistently had a relatively low rate of accumulation of human capital’.”
Sanderson: Education, economic change and society in 1780-1870 (Cambridge UP, 1995) p.61

Of course, stuff about why state intervention to ensure better basic standards of education was found to be necessary does rather subvert the Free Market message.

RT @libcon Article:: The Miseducation of Michael Gove http://bit.ly/292EfN #p2

Article:: The Miseducation of Michael Gove http://bit.ly/292EfN

Article:: The Miseducation of Michael Gove http://bit.ly/292EfN

Article:: The Miseducation of Michael Gove http://bit.ly/292EfN

Article:: The Miseducation of Michael Gove http://bit.ly/292EfN

Article:: The Miseducation of Michael Gove http://bit.ly/292EfN

Who is to say school enrolment is the best indicator of education standards? Although, of course, it would point to very low state indoctrination standards as Mosley found out to his cost when he tried to do here what proved much easier in better “educated” Germany. Also note how it is perfectly possible to have a growing economy without high levels of education.

“11. No-one’s saying that knowing about characters isn’t interesting, does this mean it’s relevant in the terms of those that are saying history is important to understand modern day society? I can’t see how.”

I would say yes. If Churchill wasn’t in charge during WW2, things might have turned out very different (for better or worse, he was far from perfect). If you don’t know about him, you don’t know all the history that has led us up to this point.

But even if you don’t agree, as I said before I think it is worth knowing history even when it lacks relevance to the modern world. Partly because it allows you to practice historical methods in areas that are not obviously politically charged, partly because you never know when you might come across something that is useful after all, and also because it is part of what it is to be human – to pursue knowledge as an end in itself.

“Also note how it is perfectly possible to have a growing economy without high levels of education.”

That is only feasible when machines in factories are relatively simple and before computers – which stress literacy and numeracy skills – became ubiquitous in the workplace. On visiting Japan in the early 1980s, I was surprised to learn that well over 90% of pupils there stayed on at school until 18. We need to ask why and how it is that Germany and Japan have relatively large and competitive manufacturing sectors compared with other advanced market economies.

Michael Gove’s careful selection of history topics is manifestly tendentious. It leads to an inevitable suspicion that the primary motivation is indoctrination rather than education. Fairly obvious omitted topics, for instance, include:

- Wilberforce, the slave trade and the abolition of slavery – how long did it take?
- The later industrial revolution and the political necessity of the factory acts
- Trade unions and trade union legislation
- Industrial revolutions in mainland Europe – motivated and directed by state intervention
- The history of scientific discoveries – to which Britain made important contributions
- The Opium Wars in China and how Britain acquired Hong Kong
- The Indian Mutiny 1857
- The Boer Wars
- Winston Churchill and the Wage Boards Act of 1909
- Did Henry Ford pay Efficiency Wages?
- The arms race before WW1
- Churchill’s persistent opposition to Baldwin’s India Act 1935
- The rise of Japan’s automotive industry

That said, why should we be more concerned about little knowledge of history by school leavers rather than about little knowledge of the sciences or understanding of maths and statistics?

I agree it is a much more widespread problem than history, Bob. So I hope Gove is not committing a sin of omission by drawing attention to history this week.

Lee:

Does the fact that Einstein came up with the thoery of relativity matter one bit in the understanding of the physics? No, it doesn’t. Name’s, inventors, dates…they DON’T matter, ever.

Nonsense.

Names, dates, etc, are of tremendous psychological and narrative importance, even in the sciences, where they frame the context in which ideas developed and ‘humanise’ them.

That it was Einstein who developed both the special and general theories of relativity, or Darwin the theory of evolution by natural selection, matters because, at least at the outset we, as humans, can relate to Einstein and Darwin in a way that we can’t to their ideas if they’re presented to us entirely in isolation. Its their association with those ideas that helps draw us in, that ignites our interest in them and, ultimately, makes us want to learn.

Unity has it. It is strange that so many within the educational establishment like to re-invent the wheel on these sort of points so often. Just because something has been used for a long time doesn’t necessarily mean it needs junking.

The problem in education today – or one of the main ones, anyway – is centralisation. What is too much to take is the evil Tories trying to pretend they’re the ones that will reverse this trend when it is they that hastened this in the first place with measures like the National Curriculum, the appointment of a Thatcherite boot-boy to the head of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate, and the general emasculation of local government. That they haven’t changed can be seen in practically all of Gove’s pronouncements on this subject. Gove is that rarest of things – a Scottish Tory. Having joined the party when he was a foetus, he regularly appeared on Scottish television when he was still in nappies, pushing an ultra-Thatcherite line. He is a complete fanatic. It is for Michael Gove to decide whether schools set their classes and have a uniform policy? Thus he seeks to perpetuate the disease of central government control in education…

History is only relevant insofar as it has practical applications today.

Even by the standards of the blogosphere, this is a depressing statement. You and Michael Gove are twin sides of the same philistine coin.

Liberal Conspiracy » The Miseducation of Michael Gove http://bit.ly/7rB9x

“Just because something has been used for a long time doesn’t necessarily mean it needs junking.”

Looks like a compelling reason for junking that modern Newton stuff and bringing back the old, tried and trusted, geocentric Ptolemaic idea of the universe which had been around for centuries longer.

Was it really necessary to rehabilitate Galileo in 1992?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13618460.600-vatican-admits-galileo-was-right-.html

“the general emasculation of local government”

Having worked in both local and central government, I have to say that there is often much that needs junking in local government. It may come as an unwelcome surprise, but local government is internally often far more hierarchical than central government departments and much less tolerant of pluralism.

How come some district councils regularly rank at or near the bottom of the local education authority league table year after year – while others rank at or near the top, year after year? The correlation between local authority spending on schooling and results is rather poor.

Remember the epidemic of statanic abuse scandal of the early 1990s which swept parts of the country and the genuine abuse of children in local authority care homes which went on for years? Curiously, no local politicians ever felt obliged to take responsibility for that. Some even became government ministers.

Kenneth Baker, as Mrs Thatcher’s education minister, introduced a national curriculum for schools in 1988 because of prevailing concerns about school standards. Some schools, given the freedom, would likely end up teaching Creationism, as happens in America. After all, Darwin an’ all that evolution stuff is relatively modern.

Btw it happens that the Thatcherite chief inspector of schools referred to above attended the maintained school down the road from where I’m writing and which my son went to. That and another maintained school, also within walking distance, gain better average A-level results than Eton.

For some science curriculums, creationism would be a step up. I wasn’t talking about content though Bob there specifically, I was talking about teaching methodology. It so happens that some of the best methods happen to be the oldest too, thats all.

” It so happens that some of the best methods happen to be the oldest too, thats all.”

I’m certainly willing to go along with the idea that emprical methods are the best approach for deciding the most effective teaching methods – just as governments are usually wise to first pilot new social policies before going nation wide and it would be commercially prudent for businesses to market test new products before national or international launches.

There are substantive reasons for concerns about schooling standards and attainment in Britain: firstly, international comparisons, and secondly this:

“Up to 12 million working UK adults have the literacy skills expected of a primary school child, the Public Accounts Committee says. . . The report says there are up 12 million people holding down jobs with literacy skills and up to 16 million with numeracy skills at the level expected of children leaving primary school.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4642396.stm

I’m totally unconvinced by the new Conservative fad for “localism” – as well as for elected executive mayors.

Local councils are far too susceptible to influence or control by powerful but quirky personalities, who can have entirely foolish or even dangerous notions. I have seen it happen all too often. It’s no use saying local elections are a safeguard against failing political leadership because turnout at local elections is usually low and lives and families can be destroyed between elections.

Up to only a few years ago, we had an epidemic of Munchausen’s Syndrome By Proxy – as one medic sagely remarked online. Some local social services department fell victim to that fad just as some departments fell victim to the earlier fad of satanic-abuse. Fortunately in one way, as the supposed practices of satanic abuse amount to a criminal offence, the police were obliged to investigate and they couldn’t find evidence to support criminal charges. But that didn’t prevent some families from being destroyed and lives ruined.

Believe me, some councils discovered the potency of this formula years ago:

Failing standards of local schooling => poor local job prospects => entrenched Labour control of council

RT @markpack: RT @libcon Fact-checking Michael Gove on Churchill http://bit.ly/l582M & see http://bit.ly/3SplMF