Teaching history
How many times did you study Hitler and the second world war at school? In 13 years, I studied it three times - at primary school, when it was about children being evacuated and how it felt to live through the Blitz, and then pre-GCSE and at GCSE, centring both times on the war in Europe. I was just lucky that we were one of the few schools in my area not to require further study of that same period at A-level, though instead we studied the Tudors for the third time.
So well done to the QCA for speaking out for a broader history curriculum. If it really is the case that 40% of students arrive at secondary school hating history already, then it must be urgent.
I wonder if they can do anything about my own history teaching bugbear - the way children are taught about the Romans as if they came to Britain from nowhere, ruled for a while with reference to nowhere else and after a while left to go nowhere? It’s like teaching the history of the British empire with reference only to events in Sri Lanka!
The history syllabus, at A-Level at least, is tremendously varied. The proviso being, of course, that teachers want it to be wide-ranging and varied. At my school we studied Charlemagne and the Normans as well as our dose of Nazism. And we could easily have done Irish history, American history, King John, etc etc. The problem is, the main textbooks are on three subjects only - Nazis, Russians, Victorian Britain. So most schools stick to those topics and don’t broaden the reading out. That’s the real problem with the A-Level syllabus as it now stands. I don’t know in detail lower down the tree what it’s like, but I’d wager the problems are similar.
Be fair - the Romans were here for 300-odd years.
And I thought it was obvious why school history is big on the Nazis - to show children the terrible things that will happen if they say nasty things (or ‘follow the tabloid agenda’) about asylum seekers.
In 2001, then Education Secretary David Blunkett sent an information pack on the Shoah to every head teacher in Britain. It’s an interesting document, with two basic themes. The first is that racism is a slippery slope - object to asylum seekers one day, and soon you’ll be packing those cattle-trucks full of unfortunates.
“Such events could happen anywhere at any time unless we ensure that our society is vigilant is opposing racism, sexism and other forms of bigotry”. Continuous parallels are drawn between modern asylum-seekers and 1930s German Jewry.
“Research Britain’s response to victims of Nazism throughout the 1930s.
Could the British Government have done more?
Provide examples of refugees who have come to Britain in the last 10 years.
How do we know about them and how are they treated here?”
I presume the correct answer to the last question is ‘vilified by the tabloid press, especially the Mail’.
Interesting point, Laban. I will admit to that post being from the indignant history student Antonia, not the leftie Antonia. You’re right, there is a real value in terms of citizenship to drumming into students world war two and the associated events.
The answer to your question is “Not once.” I never studied WW2 at school. If I had, I might have found history more interesting, because WW2 is interesting, and exciting. I’m not convinced by your idea that studying less of it will make kids more interested in history. The reason I was uninterested in history at school was that we were taught that history isn’t just about kings and queens and generals; it’s about ordinary people. So we studied ordinary people. Here is a peasant. We don’t know his name. He ploughed a small strip of land for twenty years then died. Here is another peasant. He might have been called John. He didn’t plough his land, because it was too stony, but he did own an ox. Then he died. What our teachers had failed to grasp was that, while history is indeed about all people, the kings and queens and generals are the interesting ones, especially for kids. If only we could have studied a bit of Nazism: I might even have taken it to A-level.
I find it incredible that you didn’t study the second world war at school, Squander. If you don’t mind me asking, when were you at school? And I quite agree with your point about needing to teach young people about kings and queens and generals: one of the things that I hate about history teaching is precisely the exclusive focus on ordinary people for much of the syllabus.
Actually, I never studied WW2 either. We spent a great deal of time studying the various screwups of the League of Nations, the rise of Nazi Germany and the like, the stopped dead in 1939 with Neville Chamberlain, only to emerge blinking in the Bay of Pigs. British history post-1939 dodn’t get a mention at all.
How odd. I agree that the way the syllabus seems to jump around is irritating too.
I went to one of the best comprehensives in Inner London between 85 and 90. Of course, that’s a bit like driving one of the fastest cars in Legoland.
Unlike Sam, neither did I study any of the run-up to or aftermath of WW2. No 20th-Century history at all, come to think of it. Or 19th. Or 18th. Oh, or 17th. Or the Renaissance. Or the Romans. It was all ordinary people from the Middle Ages — the single least interesting group of humans ever. Unsurprisingly, I dropped it as soon as I could.
I’m a history teacher in one of those legoland fast cars referred to here, and I’ve got to say I don’t recognise the curriculum that you refer to. We do the rise of Hitler at AS and the causes of World War Two at GCSE, but we also cover Italian Unification, Elizabeth the first’s Government, the Cold War and Post-revolutionary Russia at A level and the failings of the post 1919 world order, the beginnings of England’s welfare state, the 1920’s Boom in the USA, the Great Depression Gangsters and the New Deal at GCSE. Pretty varied if you ask me.
Also, read the QCA document and the recent Fabian press release very carefully - there’s more to them than meets the eye.
History does not need to be limited to a study of C20th men with moustaches. All the major exam boards offer a variety of options at GCSE and especially at A Level.
However, teachers are limited by 2 things: a) resources, and, much more significantly, b) expertise.
Educational publishers will produce resources for whatever topics are being taught - they are driven by what we want!
However, as long as schools tend to specialise in Russia and Nazi Germany (both of which are fantastically interesting and valuable topics, I think) the next generation of History teachers are steered in the direction of teaching those same topics.
I studied this kind of History at A Level and tried to branch out and study more widely when I got to university. It took me 2 years to realise why I was getting poorer grades than I expected - everyone else was studying the same stuff they’d done at A Level.
It is the same when graduates begin teaching - understandably, generally they stick to what they’ve studied themselves, which tends to be Hitler’s Germany and revolutionary Russia.
I’m not blaming teachers though. If schools stopped offering those C20th courses, I bet numbers studying History would drop dramatically. This is what the kids want to learn about. What’s wrong with that? I’d rather have full classes of interested kids studying a relatively limited curriculum than feeling that I was teaching a broad curriculum which few people wanted to learn about.
I know that kids can’t get interested in what they don’t know anything about, but should we ignore what they ARE interested in and hope that they MIGHT become interested in something else?
Russia and Nazi Germany are arguably the two most important topics for anyone wanting to reach an understanding of the modern world. Surely it would be negligent not to offer these topics?
Also, finally, History is so huge that any study at an advanced level necessitates some degree of specialisation. Whatever we teach at A Level someone will object that we’re leaving something important out…