Ah yes, don’t you just love that tory freedom, of lets get the state of peoples backs……..Oh wait…..

Lets have the state get a far right wing fruit cake to instruct teachers
on what history should be taught.

Just another example of the so called fake libertarians having no problem with the state as long as they are pulling the strings.

It is impossible to understand anything about society without a broad understanding of how we got from caves to nuclear shelters. Whatever my kids’ schools teach them I am damn sure my children will not leave school without this if I have to teach it myself. In some ways, you can’t understand anythng about Henry VIII or Hitler by just looking at them in isolation from the big picture.

For anyone with kids, I recommend E H Gombrich’s “Little History Of The World”. Easy to read, but with an underlying seriousness of purpose.

Why is not possible for Britons to have a broad outline our history from 55 BC to the modern day?

Asking your right wing mate to redraw the history curriculum to show that the British Empire was a “good thing” and make it more right-wing and acceptable to you and your political aims…

..Isn’t that the dreaded “social engineering”, that Tories hate when it results in wind-and-waterprooof houses for the lower orders?

I’m all for a through knowledge of the glories of the history of these little islands: William Wallace, Owain Glyndwyr, Wat Tyler and the Peasants’ Revolt, Jack Cade and the Kent Rebellion, the Levellers and the Putney Debates, Wilberforce and the Anti-Slavery Campaign, the Peterloo Massacre, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Chartists, the Suffragettes, the Easter Rising, the General Strike, the Battle of Cable Street, the Committee of 100, Greenham Common, the Poll Tax Riots… And I’m glad that Mr Gove agrees with me. Mr Gove? Hello?

It started so well…

The point really should be that kids should not be taught merely to pass exams. Exams are good (perhaps) to determine how much a child knows and this then can be used to indicate their ability to do a job that involves that subject.

But frankly being taught a subject by rote so that you can pass an exam does not help the student and does not help whoever it is that will use the exam results to evaluate the student. (And I know since my daughter has just finished her A levels and my son will take his GCSEs next year, and so I am pretty clued up – from talking to various other parents – about how schools maximise their results.)

The problem is the league tables. Get rid of league tables and you may well find that teachers who want to enthuse all their students, even those who are not expected to get high grades, will be allowed to teach. It is not the curriculum that is the problem, it is the excessive league table culture and the idea that no one can fail.

“Many of them will not see the need to get their heads round isosceles triangles, to pluck a topic at random, on the not entirely unreasonably grounds that such knowledge will provide little return in adult life.”

Its funny, but I always understood that it was the function of teaching to teach what it is deemed the child needs to learn, not what the child deems he wants to learn.

Worse, I had the same sort of reactionary oppressive views when I was a child myself (though I grant I might not have articulated them like that).

Even worse, when I look back on the things I remember not enjoying when I was being forced to learn ‘stuff’ I did not want to, it becomes increasingly clear how important most of it was.

(I wish I had paid closer attention in English for example…)

Do we have to seriously entertain the idea that just because a kid does not understand why isosceles triangles might be important to know about? Being a child do we regard it as reasonable to defer to the views of an uneducated child as to what is worth being educated about, and we should therefore give in to his ignorance by not teaching him???

You and Gove are right. Children need to develop a feeling for the shape of history: what comes before and after what, what is synchronous and so on.

You’re probably right too that re-balancing the curriculum shouldn’t be left to one man. But it shouldn’t be entrusted to a committee either. Perhaps Ferguson could invite Andrew Roberts and Michael Burleigh to help him do it over lunch at the Garrick.

I have yet to meet a historian of any political stripe who would glorify empire (or equally say the general strike) rather than try to explain how it happened. I think those that would might better be regarded as polemicists. As Dave says, lets wait and see before criticising, and remember that what is most important is that there is a curriculum which teaches history as what happened and why, rather than a chain of unconnected incidents (and I have seen too many history curricula doing just that – even marked a few). Anyway, any period or area of history can and should be taught from different perspectives, so a changed curriculum will not mean a particular political point of view.

Considering the main virtue of history is as a thinking/communication subject, it might also be a good idea if essays were reintroduced as the mainstream of the subject at school.

Oh, and Dave. Can I point out the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy is now judged not to be a useful idea, since at no point can we show there were exactly seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms… The joys of a subject undergoing continual research.

But to reduce it to mere boosterism for the time when Britannia ruled the waves would leave us no further forward than we are at present

I assume from this that you haven’t read any of Ferguson’s not-for-telly histories. I would challenge anyone to read, for instance, The Pity of War and come away from it with the impression that Ferguson is any sort of mindless patriotic booster. His stuff on the Rothschilds is excellent too.

I’m all for a through knowledge of the glories of the history of these little islands: William Wallace, Owain Glyndwyr, Wat Tyler and the Peasants’ Revolt, Jack Cade and the Kent Rebellion, the Levellers and the Putney Debates, Wilberforce and the Anti-Slavery Campaign, the Peterloo Massacre, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Chartists, the Suffragettes, the Easter Rising, the General Strike, the Battle of Cable Street, the Committee of 100, Greenham Common, the Poll Tax Riots… And I’m glad that Mr Gove agrees with me. Mr Gove? Hello?

Absolutely, so say all of us. Provided of course that some sort of context is provided so that we know who Glyndwyr (for example) was and what he was fighting for, and that children hear about the Offshore Squadron as well as Governor Eyre. Teaching history from only one perspective is extremely limiting – I don’t think even Niall Ferguson is proposing the re-introduction of Our Island Story as a sole text.

On the other hand, the day that any school history curriculum has the time and the space to teach the self-indulgent political maunderings of a 1960s pacifist sub-group is quite some way off.

Trying to explain why people were so furiously angry at a form of local taxation that they rioted in 1989, but were apparently completely unbothered by paying hugely larger local taxes just over a decade later might be tricky as well.

“Pupils get to hear about Henry VIII and Hitler in some considerable depth, and that’s about it.”

That’s not true…

Christ, when I was at school under the last Tory lot, all I got taught was the horrors of the First World war trenches – about three times – and the horrors of the Holocaust – about five times. The same things kept coming round and round.

Why do we just need English history – great and fascinating as it is. Why not Chinese and Middle Eastern and Russian history too?

Please remind us, what was all that “localism” stuff on about?

Whatever it was, it evidently doesn’t extend to the history curriculum of schools.

I shall be absolutely fascinated to see how the prescribed curriculum treats – if at all – all those perennially embarrassing parts, such as the 18th century slave trade, the intervention of the factory acts, the Indian mutiny, the Opium Wars, the Education Act of 1870 and what motivated that.

Earlier leaks had it that the new history curriculum was to include the early industrial revolution in Britain (with laissez-faire) but not the later industrial revolution – or the industrial revolution in western Europe where state intervention was far more extensive.

Without illumination of these issues, I’m bound to conclude the new history curriculum is an exercise in propaganda, not scholarship.

Can the kids learn about how much of the Troy party was pro Nazi during the 1930’s and how the Daily Mail was pro Hitler. And how senior members of the Royal family were plotting with tory aristocrats against Churchill , and would have been quite happy to have a deal with Hitler in which they stayed on as head of state as a kind of Vichy in England?

“Can the kids learn about how much of the Troy party was pro Nazi during the 1930’s and how the Daily Mail was pro Hitler.”

C’mon. Lloyd George, the last Liberal prime minister of Britain, went on a visit to Germany in August 1936 to meet with Herr Hitler. Here is a video clip of that meeting:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=e_ApfE3Wjxg

On his return to Britain, Lloyd George wrote an article for the Daily Express on 17 November 1936:

“I have just returned from a visit to Germany. In so short time one can only form impressions or at least check impressions which years of distant observation through the telescope of the Press and constant inquiry from those who have seen things at a closer range had already made on one’s mind. I have now seen the famous German Leader and also something of the great change he has effected. Whatever one may think of his methods – and they are certainly not those of a parliamentary country – there can be no doubt that he has achieved a marvellous transformation in the spirit of the people, in their attitude towards each other, and in their social and economic outlook. . .

“What Hitler said at Nuremberg is true. The Germans will resist to the death every invader at their own country, but they have no longer the desire themselves to invade any other land. . .

“The establishment of a German hegemony in Europe which was the aim and dream of the old pre-war militarism, is not even on the horizon of Nazism. …”
http://www.icons-multimedia.com/ClientsArea/HoH/LIBARC/ARCHIVE/Chapters/Stabiliz/Foreign/LloydGeo.html

Oswald Mosley, who founded the British Union of Fascists in 1932, had been a cabinet minister in Ramsay Macdonald’s Labour government of 1929-31 until Mosley resigned in 1930 on the (reasonable) grounds that the government was doing too little to tackle rising unemployment.

Try Alan Bullock on: Hitler and Stalin – Parallel Lives, about the leading British “intellectuals” who notoriously visited the Soviet Union and returned to cheer Stalin, like George Bernard Shaw, HG Wells and Beatrice and Sydney Webb, who founded the Fabian Society. Sydney Webb had also been a cabinet minister in Ramsay Macdonald’s government.

Carefully sanitised history is precisely what worries me about the proposals for a new history curriculum.

Just another example of the so called fake libertarians having no problem with the state as long as they are pulling the strings.

This is right. Ferguson, while unquestionably of the neo-imperialist school, is a more subtle historian than his liberal and left critics give him credit for. Hobsbawm described him as ‘that excellent historian’ for good reason. Rather the problem is that central government seems to have decided one historian should be given this role of modeling a curriculum and the troops at the chalk face just have to accept it? I don’t quite see how this fits in with the whole freedom from curricular constraints idea behind the ‘free-schools’ plan. Why does a school have to opt out of local government control to get this? Curricular flexibility is either a good thing or it is not.

“Christ, when I was at school under the last Tory lot, all I got taught was the horrors of the First World war trenches – about three times – and the horrors of the Holocaust – about five times. The same things kept coming round and round. ”

Yes, that must have been so boring for you.

“Yes, that must have been so boring for you.”

The revealing insight is that few current histories of the inter-war period mention the state sponsored famine in the Ulraine during 1932-33 where the numbers who died was broadly on par with the numbers killed by the Nazis in the course of the Holocaust.

“The dreadful famine that engulfed Ukraine, the northern Caucasus, and the lower Volga River area in 1932-1933 was the result of Joseph Stalin’s policy of forced collectivization. The heaviest losses occurred in Ukraine, which had been the most productive agricultural area of the Soviet Union. Stalin was determined to crush all vestiges of Ukrainian nationalism. . . The death toll from the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine has been estimated between six million and seven million.”
http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/soviet.exhibit/famine.html

The official policy leading to that terrible outcome was clearly set out by Stalin in a speech he made on 27 December 1929 with the daunting title of: “Concerning Questions of Agrarian Policy in the USSR”, the text of which was published in Pravda and subsequently in his collected works:
http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/QAP29.html

This was the speech which included a chilling passage: “To launch an offensive against the kulaks means that we must smash the kulaks, eliminate them as a class.”

Soviet fans and agents, recruited to the Soviet cause, could hardly claim not to know about Stalin’s policy of killing by category, which was up and running years before the Nazis had settled in and created the Third Reich, let alone set up the infrastructure for the Holocaust.

At the end of WW2, Orwell had problems finding a publisher for his fable: Animal Farm, because it was considered insulting to our Soviet allies.

Yup – boring is exactly the right word. Along with patronizing. And a-historical too. Thank God for auto-didacticism.

“Yes, that must have been so boring for you.”

The seriousness of the Holocaust doesn’t change the fact that being taught the same thing over and over again is both boring for children and pointless on an educational level. I learned about the Tudors and the Egyptians in every bloody school I went to (I think I made the same model of an Egyptian well three times in three different schools). I’m not sure we even touched on, say, the French Revolution.

UK history lessons need to be broader, give a better sense of mutual context, and focus less on Britain. I know my point about the Egyptians above seems to give the lie to the last of those, but I’m pretty sure that was covered under “interesting but fairly useless stuff kids might actually pay attention to”.

@20: “I’m not sure we even touched on, say, the French Revolution”

For the 2002 Federal Elections in Germany I wanted to look up some of the finer points of the electoral system so I visited the central reference library of the London borough where I live which, incidentally, has a generally well regarded library system. I asked the librarian on duty for assistance in searching for texts on current politics and government in Germany.

The computer search turned up with just one book on modern German politics – a thoroughly respectable academic textbook – along with several dozen texts relating to the history of the rise and fall of Third Reich.

In the week that followed, I wondered what a similar search for a text on modern French politics and government would turn up so I went back to the library. The search turned up just one text on modern French politics along with several dozen texts relating to the history of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

It seems to me these priorities for the library shelf stock are completely misplaced but I guess I will be told the stock reflects user demands, namely, a greater interest in the past history of Europe than in the present.

The trouble with arguing for teaching a sweeping (and progressively more complicated as the children get older) narrative history of Britain is that there isn’t one. Attempting to teach History within such a framework would be to impose a narrow, ideologically motivated, teleology on the subject. It’s often the case that the grander a narrative is, the more dubious it happens to be. Narrative is important in teaching History to children, of course, but they aren’t as stupid as we like to think. They can cope with more than one easily enough, and doing so would be better for them and (in the long run) for society.

The trouble with arguing for teaching a sweeping (and progressively more complicated as the children get older) narrative history of Britain is that there isn’t one

This isn’t so. Narratives are imposed on history simply because it is open to human interpretation. History is an art and not a science, despite what our Marxist friends would have us believe. The thing to do is to teach students to be critical of the various narratives that are on offer – but to dispense with them completely just makes the teaching of history a disjointed and jerky affair.

What is the saying
“History is written by the winners”

Narratives are imposed on history simply because it is open to human interpretation. History is an art and not a science, despite what our Marxist friends would have us believe. The thing to do is to teach students to be critical of the various narratives that are on offer – but to dispense with them completely just makes the teaching of history a disjointed and jerky affair.

Exactly. Who could be more proudly English than EP Thompson. And yet as a narrative, these days, his texts tell us more about what it was like to be in the British Army in the 2nd World War than about what was happening inside British Society in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Learning to be critical of all narratives – human as well as historical – is excellent training for the world.

[24] Or, learning the mistakes of history …… so we can make the same ones all over again?

It could have been worse.

They could have sent for Andrew Roberts.

@ and AJP Taylor

Also it is little silly teaching history in pure British context mainly because the influences of other world events on British History. For instance what is the point of teaching WW2 without explaining how the Nazis came to power.
Also I do love the idea of Ferguson’s lessons on slavery and the chartists.
Slavery, was it that bad ?
Chartists, trouble making lefties, please repeal the reform acts.

I agree with all those on here who reject the silly idea that Ferguson is any kind of ‘booster’ for imperialism. He is a revisionist historian of empire but he leaves and even points to plenty of space to disagree with him. I don’t see any reason to think his curriculum would not be an excellent one. In fact there is a lot of Marxism in Ferguson, he takes very seriously the degree to which social class relations and modes of ownership and production shape many of those historical currents that are presented by ideologues as being the result of personality and character.

Rather the problem is that central government seems to have decided one historian should be given this role of modeling a curriculum and the troops at the chalk face just have to accept it?

I don’t think this is true incidentally. Ferguson and Gove were at a talk at the Hay on Wye festival. Ferguson was criticising the modern history curriculum, and Gove said something along the lines of ‘Any input you could give into this would be greatly appreciated’ and Ferguson replied that he’d do just that.

The trouble with arguing for teaching a sweeping (and progressively more complicated as the children get older) narrative history of Britain is that there isn’t one.

Of course there is. Narrative history (telling the things what happened) at a high socio-political level is extremely straightforward. A narrative progression of topics along the lines of: Romans in Britain, Alfred the Great, the Norman Conquest, Magna Carta and the Peasant’s Revolt, the Hundred years war and the Wars of the Roses, the Tudors and Stuarts, the Civil War and the Restoration, the Georgian era (1700-1837), the Victorian era and the short 20th Century (1914-1989) gives you an excellent narrative sweep through British history that can be simplified or made more complex at choice.

The difficulty is taking individial topics (such as the slave trade) and taking them out of context. Why was Britain so involved in the slave trade? Why did it ban it? How did it enforce the ban? Why was it able to? Why was there opposition to the ban at home and abroad? If you don’t cover subjects (however briefly) like British sea-power or the radical tradition in British politics you end up with a partial and pretty useless snippet.

Alternatively, take the Indian Rebellion of 1857 – how do you propose teaching that without looking at John Company, at the rise of Anglican evangelism, at the pre-colonial India division between Hindu and Muslim and so on and so on. There are very few stand-alone subjects in history.

It will be fascinating to see History seen from this new perspective. Before the election, the right-wing MEP, Daniel Hannan, said that he was personally inspired in his politics by the Levellers. “If the Levellers were around today,” Hannan wrote, ” I doubt they’d be planning to vote Labour. They’d support withdrawal from the EU, an end to quangos (“Crown placemen”) and democratic local control of the police and judiciary. ”

Another Tory rightist, Douglas Carswell, wrote this blog post claiming the Levellers for the Conservatives:

http://www.talkcarswell.com/show.aspx?id=1316

on the not entirely unreasonably grounds that such knowledge will provide little return in adult life

You do know that maths graduates earn more than any other subject?

18. Bob b . Malcom Muggeridge travelled by train through the Ukraine in the 30s and reported what he saw . I believe is comments were ignored or played down by the Mancheser Guardian . Comments on the famine in Ukraine were repeated in MM’s autobiography. When R Conquest first mentioned the famine he was crticised for greatly criticised overstating the deaths by largely left wing British authors ; now crticised by Ukrainian authors for underestimating the famine . A play has just been written by a Ukrainian on the subject of the famine which includes cannibalism.

When it come to the slave trade, then the arab slavers capturing British and Irish people in the early 17 century off Cornwall, Devon and Ireland should be included. There used to be funds in Cornwall and Devon to buy back British slaves from captivity in N Africa. Red headed women were particularly favoured by the arab slavers. In addition, The Royal Navy was extensively involved in supressing slavery in W Africa, East Africa Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf( up to the mid 1960s) from bout 1815. About 1500 sailors died in preventing slavery in West Africa. D Livingstone was heavily involved in trying to prevent slavery by Arabs in East Africa – Zanzibar was the the major port for this trade . Slavery was still practised in S Arabia until the mid 1950s. The white slave trade whereby arabs and turks captured Europeans tends not to be discussed.

There is also the issue of slavery practised by the Ottoman Empire which continued up to 1918 and still occurs in Niger.

When teaching British history what tends to be ignored is often what is happening in Europe and other parts of the World where Britain has involvement. Often what is found is that Britain tended to be more free and wealthier than other parts of Europe. The idea that the English are ruled by set of laws comes from the time of Edward the Confessor. Magna Carta and of 1215 and the first Parliament of 1275? shows that in England the creation of a system of law and governance which prevent the monarch claiming and acting with absolute power was quite rare. If there is one thread which runs through British History is that this country where there has been less extremes of wealth and power compared to others . The existance of a national law, of small landowners ( freemen, franklins and yoeman farmers ), volunteer archers paid in currency drawn from the freemen of this country and attempts to challenge the corruption and power of the Church ( Wycliffe 1380s) has meant that Britian was a more egalitarian society , where hard work and ability allowed to prosper, compared to many European countries. The Industrial Revolution was the product of the enterprise of crafstmen not the aristocracy. A major aspect of English law that one was allowed to do and say whatever one wanted unless there was a law which forbid that action much of continental law used to allow that action which had been granted.

@33: “You do know that maths graduates earn more than any other subject?”

Citation, please, because that claim is unfounded according to this source:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/table-what-do-graduates-earn-1675502.html

” If there is one thread which runs through British History is that this country where there has been less extremes of wealth and power compared to others .”

Unitl we get to New Labour, that is:

“The chances of a child from a poor family enjoying higher wages and better education than their parents is lower in Britain than in other western countries, the OECD says”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/10/oecd-uk-worst-social-mobility

I suppose you could argue teaching slavery as a black-only issue is wrong, considering minor issues such as the word slave being derived from Slav, for the rather obvious reason (note also the use of wealh, Old English for foreigner (or Welsh) and also slave). Still, slavery in the modern conception needs to be focussed on the America trade, simply because it is the most commonly recognised image of slavery, and whilst some context would be good (and also asking why Britain’s notable role in abolishing slavery is often not mentioned, or at least wasn’t in my schooling), if you are going to teach a historical, you need to focus on what people understand as that topic as the core issue. That is how people learn.

But how do you decide what to include in a topic like slavery – where do you start and end; how do you deal with the claims of certain groups who still make it an issue etc. That is what designing a curriculum is about – making these choices. If Professor Ferguson is prepared to try that, good luck to him. He will inevitably irritate just about everyone who is prepared to comment, because of the choices involved…

Personally though, I wonder whether we’ll get back the old stories that people learnt (as stories, but in history) such as Cnut and the waves and Alfred and the cakes. Not sure we need them, but they were fun.

Personally though, I wonder whether we’ll get back the old stories that people learnt (as stories, but in history) such as Cnut and the waves and Alfred and the cakes. Not sure we need them, but they were fun.

And about the best way of making learning history fun for smalls that there is. Primary school just isn’t the place for an inquisition into the Atlantic Slave Trade or the Holocaust. It’s where you should learn about Robert the Bruce’s spider or knights in shining armour. Once you get the spark of why history is interesting and fun, you’re much better equipped to learn about the darker aspects of history.

Surely there is something a little bit worrying that people can leave school without knowing enough about key figures in British history, who still have an important influence today. I’m talking about Freeborn John, the Levellers and other key figures during the English revolution, the Chartists, the Suffragettes and a whole host of other figures – Gladstone, Disraeli, Keir Hardie, Lloyd George etc.

The triangular Atlantic slave trade in the 18th century was of great economic importance to Britain. The prosperity of Liverpool and Bristol greatly depended on it:

“The profits made from the global trade of sugar, tea and coffee were the major driving force behind the triangular trade. For centuries it provided substantial quantities of venture capital for the industrial revolution and the development of the western European economy. . . ”
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/freedom/viewTheme.cfm/theme/triangular

Try this on Turner’s painting: The Slave Ship, first exhibited in 1840:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Slave_Ship

All of these comments show that history is an exciting subject when there are competing views and narratives. I remember the best history programme I ever saw on telly was about welsh history where two historians presented it – grumpy old men – one was a Marxist, the other favoured a more traditional narrative. They just argued about the meaning of everything. Much better than any single narrator.

This is an instructive example from 1781 of “moral hazard” arising from insurance cover against potential commercial losses on cargo during sea voyages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zong_Massacre

I wonder if it will be included in our new national curriculum for history.

I did History to A level and from memory we did

1066 and all that

The 100 years war

The wars of the roses

Renaissance and reformation (in considerable depth), “Hapsburg-Valois hedgemony” is a phrase I have never forgotten

The counter reformation in depth (despite being a catholic grammar school no punches were pulled)

18th century – Trade and the triangle

1930s eastern block formation (Stalin etc), global depression and rise of far right in europe

WW2 (and the political bits of WW1 deemed relevant to the start of WW2)

The cold war (anyone else remember the “domino” theory of communism ?)

The vietnam war – this was deemed to be where history “ended” at the time (at that point it had been over for less than a decade)

None of it seemed especially politically inspired or jingoisitic, in hindsight it was fairly anti-communist (due to it being the height of the cold war), but the British Empire hardly featured as a concept. Having said that It is absurd to attempt to airbrush it (as most “progressives” would like) out of history.

Does anyone have a view on why Historians tend to be right wing, in the same way that Economists tend to be left wing ?

Primary school just isn’t the place for an inquisition into the Atlantic Slave Trade or the Holocaust.
I don’t think they are taught in the primary curriculum

It’s where you should learn about Robert the Bruce’s spider or knights in shining armour. Once you get the spark of why history is interesting and fun, you’re much better equipped to learn about the darker aspects of history.

Good point. In fact Ferguson,s curriculum may have a negative effect. Better we give governing bodies the right to teach “interesting history” that has relevance to their own area ( Cornwall and smugglers). Certainly in primary school to elicit the interest.
Medieval Realms , which is taught in year 7 is full of crusaders, black death, knights and armour , motte and baileys and Harold.
Even right wingers like John M and Ferguson surely can’t disagree with that particular topic.

A lot of the comments on what the history curriculum ought to include are ignoring one key constraint: time. Unless you want to make history GCSE compulsary, you have three years of secondary school history, and probably a maximum of 2 hours a week for 40 weeks a year. Even a narrative history just of Britain is going to be hard to get into that space: you can stick all history pre 1500 into Year 1 (as my school did before the National Curriculum was ever heard of), but that still leaves you with 1500–1800 (Tudors, Stuarts, some Georgians) for Year 2, if you’re going to have a whole year for the 19th and 20th centuries. You might get 3 or 4 weeks on the Civil War at most. If you want pupils actually to have time to stop and think about what they’re being told, you can fit even less in.

Does anyone have a view on why Historians tend to be right wing, in the same way that Economists tend to be left wing ?

Neither is the case.
You get left wing historians (AJP Taylor and EP Thompson) and right wing economists ( Alan Walters and Milton Friedman)
Just a silly generalisation, as many of your comments tend to be.
Matt everything to you is black and white (left = bad , right = good).

@ 46 Piss of Rhys, you patronising prat

Matt
I don’t feel the love.
Also were you named after the wonderful crooner or is that a moniker

“When it come to the slave trade, then the arab slavers capturing British and Irish people in the early 17 century off Cornwall, Devon and Ireland should be included. There used to be funds in Cornwall and Devon to buy back British slaves from captivity in N Africa. Red headed women were particularly favoured by the arab slavers. In addition,”
Very true. In fact many pubs in cornwall and Devon are named after these pirates

“The Royal Navy was extensively involved in supressing slavery in W Africa, East Africa Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf( up to the mid 1960s) from bout 1815. About 1500 sailors died in preventing slavery in West Africa.”
In fact this is the central theme to the film Amistad by Spielberg and is one the few films from Hollywood in which the British are the good guys.

D Livingstone was heavily involved in trying to prevent slavery by Arabs in East Africa – Zanzibar was the the major port for this trade . Slavery was still practised in S Arabia until the mid 1950s. The white slave trade whereby arabs and turks captured Europeans tends not to be discussed.

Very true but in term of numbers, the European Slave trade outstripped the Arabs.

In a way you are making point for me. How can you discuss the slave trade without looking with a global dimension.

I did listen recently to a young lady educated in a very posh private school on one of those tiresome reality programmes defending slavery and wishing for it to be brought back.
Now there is a cause for you men of the right.

In fact Ferguson,s curriculum may have a negative effect. Better we give governing bodies the right to teach “interesting history” that has relevance to their own area ( Cornwall and smugglers). Certainly in primary school to elicit the interest.

Medieval Realms , which is taught in year 7 is full of crusaders, black death, knights and armour , motte and baileys and Harold.

I think we ought to wait a bit and see what the proposed curriculum is. Given that the other main focus of Coalition education policy is to allow schools to duck out of central control altogether, I’d be surprised if they are too prescriptive over what must be taught.

For illuminating historical perspective on the extent of the slave trade, see this about Arab slave traders:

” From the 16th to 19th century, [Barbary Coast] pirates captured an estimated 800,000 to 1.25 million Europeans as slaves, mainly from seaside villages in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, but also from France, Britain, the Netherlands, Ireland and as far away as Iceland.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Corsairs

51 – I believe that the first overseas war fought by the United States was a campaign against the Barbary States.

…to dispense with them completely just makes the teaching of history a disjointed and jerky affair.

Very true; but I’m not arguing for getting rid of narratives, I’m not a postmodernist! But single sweeping grand narratives are almost always teleological which is why they should be avoided like the plague. There’s no reason why children can’t be taught multiple narratives; they aren’t nearly as stupid as adults tend to assume. Most would probably find it more interesting as well.

“Does anyone have a view on why Historians tend to be right wing?”

Um… they don’t.

I remember the best history programme I ever saw on telly was about welsh history where two historians presented it – grumpy old men – one was a Marxist, the other favoured a more traditional narrative. They just argued about the meaning of everything. Much better than any single narrator.

Was that the one with Gwyn Alf Williams?

51. Bob b. Hence towns were built away from the coas, on hill tops, with houses close together, winding roads around a central church /fort in order to maximise the defensive capability.

Bob b . There are also the the Ottoman Turks taking European slaves and slave route from E Africa via Zanzibar into Arabia and Iraq. One of the reasons the Iraqis hated the Americans was the presence of African American soldiers whom they considered slaves as there presence was an even greater insult to their honour. Some of the Iraqis targeted the African American soldiers more than the white American soldiers.

“think we ought to wait a bit and see what the proposed curriculum is. Given that the other main focus of Coalition education policy is to allow schools to duck out of central control altogether, I’d be surprised if they are too prescriptive over what must be taught.”

Who brought in the most prescriptive NC ever in UK history.
The Conservatives, why should they change.
Gove and Ferguson wants a right wing prescriptive curriculum.
Why don’t they have a group of historians (from a wide range of historical perspectives) to come out with a fluid flexible curriculum that schools can use according to their needs.
Children love gore, tales and the unusual.

Just because the Arabs were as bad as the Europeans. It doesn’t mean that slavery by the Europeans wasn’t an injustice.

Rhys Williams

Now there is a cause for you men of the right.

It was a ‘man of the right’. William Wilberforce, who abolished the slave trade.

True but Wilberforce would probably now be castigated by the right now as a wet.
It was also men of the right who started it. The African and European
Mainly independent entrepreneurs such as African internal slavers, Cortes, Hawkins and Drake.
Also the hero of the libertarian right Gladstone. His first speech in parliament was a defence of slavery.

It would be unfair to judge Niall Ferguson’s proposals before he presents them. However, let’s hope he has not been taking lessons from Texas where the conservative response to the facts having a liberal bias is to just change the facts.

Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: March 12, 2010

AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it.

The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. In the digital age, however, that influence has diminished as technological advances have made it possible for publishers to tailor books to individual states.

In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state.

Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

Battles over what to put in science and history books have taken place for years in the 20 states where state boards must adopt textbooks, most notably in California and Texas. But rarely in recent history has a group of conservative board members left such a mark on a social studies curriculum.

Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”

“They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians,” she said. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”

The curriculum standards will now be published in a state register, opening them up for 30 days of public comment. A final vote will be taken in May, but given the Republican dominance of the board, it is unlikely that many changes will be made.

The standards, reviewed every decade, serve as a template for textbook publishers, who must come before the board next year with drafts of their books. The board’s makeup will have changed by then because Dr. McLeroy lost in a primary this month to a more moderate Republican, and two others — one Democrat and one conservative Republican — announced they were not seeking re-election.

There are seven members of the conservative bloc on the board, but they are often joined by one of the other three Republicans on crucial votes. There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics.

The conservative members maintain that they are trying to correct what they see as a liberal bias among the teachers who proposed the curriculum. To that end, they made dozens of minor changes aimed at calling into question, among other things, concepts like the separation of church and state and the secular nature of the American Revolution.

“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”

They also included a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”

Dr. McLeroy, a dentist by training, pushed through a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also made sure that textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported.

“Republicans need a little credit for that,” he said. “I think it’s going to surprise some students.”

Mr. Bradley won approval for an amendment saying students should study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation. He also won approval for an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.

Other changes seem aimed at tamping down criticism of the right. Conservatives passed one amendment, for instance, requiring that the history of McCarthyism include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers were transcripts of some 3,000 communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the United States.

Mavis B. Knight, a Democrat from Dallas, introduced an amendment requiring that students study the reasons “the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.”

It was defeated on a party-line vote.

After the vote, Ms. Knight said, “The social conservatives have perverted accurate history to fulfill their own agenda.”

In economics, the revisions add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market economic theory, among the usual list of economists to be studied, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. They also replaced the word “capitalism” throughout their texts with the “free-enterprise system.”

“Let’s face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation,” said one conservative member, Terri Leo. “You know, ‘capitalist pig!’ ”

In the field of sociology, another conservative member, Barbara Cargill, won passage of an amendment requiring the teaching of “the importance of personal responsibility for life choices” in a section on teenage suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders.

“The topic of sociology tends to blame society for everything,” Ms. Cargill said.

Even the course on world history did not escape the board’s scalpel.

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

“The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based,” Ms. Dunbar said.

Thanks for that, Richard.

Btw do you know if the Texas Board officially sanctioned the inclusion of the writings of JS Mill in school literature or was he deemed unacceptably subversive, libertarian or irreligious?

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

I think this thread illustrates his point. Lefties think that “history” means learning about empire/the slave trade and beating ourselves up over it for ever more

@61

True but Wilberforce would probably now be castigated by the right now as a wet.

If Ken Clarke can get into Cameron’s Cabinet, I’m sure Wilberforce would, if he were alive today.

“Does anyone have a view on why Historians tend to be right wing, in the same way that Economists tend to be left wing ?”

There have been plenty of Liberal historians. The only reason Right wing historians are so in vouge is that the right now has such a control of the media, and therefore controls what is pushed.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

BULLSHIT. The Right always plays this card.. It is like Fox and it’s so called fair and balanced editorial policy. They Right is neither fair or balanced. They have their own political correct agenda, and they push it very hard. Trouble is they don’t have the honesty or integrity to admit it. So it is always done under the fig leaf of balance. But make no mistake, they like to indoctrinate just as much as the Communists.

Go and look at the Texas school board, and they ludicrous way it is controlling the teaching of American history. The board is stacked with Far Right wing nuts. The flat earthers if ever there was. And because of the wonders of the bullshit free market because these books are so cheap, they being taken into schools in America.

I’m in trouble with some in the offline discussion group I belong to for suggesting those pushing Creationism and Intelligent Design have a great deal to account for after the fatalities from the Asian tsunami in 2004 and the earthquake in Haiti this year.

Richard W @ 62

Your Texas example is a good demonstration why the History curriculum should be reviewed with a view to expunging liberal myths. The fiction of a constitutional ‘separation of Church and State’ would quickly dissolve if anyone bothered to teach what the American Founders actually did.

A good place to start would be the Congress of the Confederation 1774-89. That Congress appointed chaplains for itself and the armed forces, sponsored the publication of a Bible, imposed Christian morality on the armed forces, and granted public lands to promote Christianity among the Indians.

On July 4, 1776, Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams “to bring in a device for a seal for the United States of America.” Franklin’s proposal adapted the biblical story of the parting of the Red Sea. Jefferson first recommended the “Children of Israel in the Wilderness, led by a Cloud by Day, and a Pillar of Fire by night. . . .” He then embraced Franklin’s proposal.

Congress proclaimed days of fasting and of thanksgiving annually throughout the Revolutionary War. This proclamation by Congress set May 17, 1776, as a “day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer” throughout the colonies. Congress urges its fellow citizens to “confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions, and by a sincere repentance and amendment of life, appease his [God’s] righteous displeasure, and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain his pardon and forgiveness.”

The war with Britain cut off the supply of Bibles to the United States with the result that on Sept. 11, 1777, Congress instructed its Committee of Commerce to import 20,000 Bibles from “Scotland, Holland or elsewhere.” On January 21, 1781, Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken petitioned Congress to officially sanction a publication of the Bible which he was preparing. Congress “highly approve the pious and laudable undertaking of Mr. Aitken, as subservient to the interest of religion . . . in this country, and . . . they recommend this edition of the bible to the inhabitants of the United States.”

Don’t sound like the kind of people who’d want to ban prayer in schools or banish the 10 Commandments from a courthouse, do they?

The words upon which liberals have built their myth were drafted by James Madison: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” In notes for his June 8, 1789, speech introducing the Bill of Rights, Madison indicated his opposition to a “national” religion. Most Americans agreed that the federal government must not pick out one religion and give it exclusive financial and legal support. There was a history of in-fighting and persecution between Puritans, Quakers and Catholics.

The Founders’ clear intention was to prevent any one denomination becoming established like the C of E in England. It was not about keeping religion out of politics/ state institutions.

Your Texas example is a good demonstration why the History curriculum should be reviewed with a view to expunging liberal myths.

Oh please, another brownshirt troll pushing bullshit.

Of course, there are compelling reasons why avowed rightists in America would want to push Christianity and its ethical principles:

“28 Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. 29 For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. 30 And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
[Matthew chp. 25]
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2025:14-30

“12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” [Matthew chp. 7]
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+7%3A12&version=NIV

What if others have different preferences?

@ 68. Flowerpower

Of course historical events are open to various interpretations. However, that is not really the point. I readily accept that no one can ever be totally objective and free of bias. However, the Texas case is an example of an Dominionism agenda being pushed by Christian social conservatives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominionism

http://atheism.about.com/od/mikehuckabeechristianity/a/ConstitutionGod.htm

http://www.theocracywatch.org/

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”
I think this thread illustrates his point. Lefties think that “history” means learning about empire/the slave trade and beating ourselves up over it for ever more

Earlier in the thread you said all historians were right wing.
Also how can history be skewed. There are many historians, right and left who deliver their idea of the past.
The problem with rightists like yourself, John Meredith and flowerpower is that you only one point of view instead of a plethora of different ideas.
I have no problem with Ferguson as long as other historians such as Scharma have an input.
As for your points about empire and slavery. Ferguson is saying the curriculum should be about empire. Also most of us agree that slavery was/is a global evil.
Which is still with us today. In some countries children are sold by their parents to entrepeneurs as “apprentices”. Which is an evil we shy away from because of our love for cheap clothes
As for beating ourselves up, you learn by looking at mistakes and strengths from the past. I thought that was the point of historical research.Also many of many favourites historians are from the right such as Beevor.
I have to say also the ones I cannot stand also come from that direction. Andrew Roberts for instance.

@ 72 “As for your points about empire and slavery. Ferguson is saying the curriculum should be about empire. Also most of us agree that slavery was/is a global evil.”

Agreed, but the way it’s taught in contemporary state schools gives it a dominance that it doesn’t deserve, and worse – the impression that it was the first, last and greatest evil ever and that collectively “we” (although who the we is, is never defined) bear some vicarious resposnsibility for it.

Secondly – saying the cirrcuculum should be “about empire” is meaningless. From what perspective ? Many on the right interpret that to mean just more liberal guilt purging, dressed up as education.

“As for beating ourselves up, you learn by looking at mistakes and strengths from the past. I thought that was the point of historical research.Also many of many favourites historians are from the right such as Beevo”

I refer you to my first point. Should Egyptians, Italians, Greeks, Turks, Hungarians, French, Spanish, Russians, Germans not also be looking at “mistakes” ?

The greatest lesson of history is that nothing ever changes. (I would reference that quote, but I can’t remember who said it first)

” Agreed, but the way it’s taught in contemporary state schools gives it a dominance that it doesn’t deserve, and worse – the impression that it was the first, last and greatest evil ever and that collectively “we” (although who the we is, is never defined) bear some vicarious resposnsibility for it.”

That is not true, they teach slavery in year 8 but only as short topic, mainly concentrating not on the role of British but on the the American civil war. Probably the most important war in the 19th Century after the Napoleonic conflict.
Also the topic also reflects on the role of the Africans in the slave trade.
Also economically the slave trade is of great importance because the wealth the trade created was the basis of empire and some say the industrial revolution.
So it should be taught in schools.
As for “we”, show me evidence in the topic where it blames anyone. It does show the cruelty of slavery but is that a bad thing.

Secondly – saying the cirrcuculum should be “about empire” is meaningless. From what perspective ? Many on the right interpret that to mean just more liberal guilt purging, dressed up as education
What evidence do you have of liberal guilt purging.
Year 6 history is about the Tudors and WW2
Year 7 about medieval history
Year 8 about the stuarts and slavery
Year 9,10 and 11 curriculum is about which syllabus or examination board you follow, this is true of independent and state schools.
Again the same for A level.
Where is the guilt purging.
I reality I doubt the new curriculum will be any different.

“refer you to my first point. Should Egyptians, Italians, Greeks, Turks, Hungarians, French, Spanish, Russians, Germans not also be looking at “mistakes” ?”

They do, look at the German curriculum as regards to the holocaust.
The Spanish look at consequences of the conquistadors.
The Russians are now talking abut the dark days of Stalin in their schools.