History vs. heritage

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
The Hindu, 28 July

That the teaching of history is politically disputed terrain will come as no news to Indian readers. Efforts by the Hindu right at the centre and in the states have amply illustrated how the study of the past can acquire an all-too-potent present-day ideological and communal force.

In Britain, the announcement of a new, slimmed-down national curriculum for 11-14 years olds elicited indignant headlines when it was realised it would no longer be compulsory for this age group to learn about Winston Churchill. For much of the British press, the apparent downgrading of the iconic war-time leader was another episode in a long-running conspiracy against the British heritage and way of life, for which, in various measures, at various times, the European Union, “political correctness”, immigration and Islam are blamed.

The new curriculum may omit Churchill (along, it should be noted with Gandhi) but it goes out of its way to respond to the high-profile, if remorselessly vague, discussion about the future of Britishness. As part of “citizenship” studies (made compulsory by the government in 2002), pupils will now learn “shared British values and study national identity in the UK”. History lessons, inevitably, are expected to play a significant role in this process, though no one seems clear just how this is to be done, not least the teachers supposed to be doing it.

In the wake of the announcement, a survey of teachers showed that 58% disagreed with the statement: “It is quite proper for state-funded schools to promote loyalty to the state”. Only 18% agreed. Only 13% think schools should “actively promote patriotism”. Among teachers in Britain, there seems to be, reassuringly, a healthy commitment to democracy and a reluctance to being used by the Labour government to appease the nationalist right.

The real problems facing history teaching – in contrast to the tabloid fantasies – were outlined by a recent report from Ofsted, the national schools inspectorate. While pupils demonstrate knowledge of the particular areas they’ve studied, they are “weak at linking information together to form an overall narrative” and “not good at establishing a chronology, do not make connections between the areas they have studied and so do not gain an overview, and are not able to answer the ‘big questions’.”

Inspectors found that history teaching continues to favour a narrow handful of topics, including the 16th century Tudors and 20th century wars and dictatorships. While World War II is extensively covered, few pupils learn anything at all about Japan and Germany since 1945. Overall, the subject as it is studied in English schools is too “heavily based in aspects of English history,” with Scotland, Wales and Ireland “largely ignored, as are major European and world themes” and (despite what the media would have us believe) Britain’s history as a multi-ethnic society.

Will any of this be remedied by the new stress on British values and identity? Certainly it offers that over-arching narrative whose absence the inspectors lament. A chronological-national framework does makes history easier to present and structure and study. But it can do so only by substituting, at the expense of genuine historical inquiry, a pre-digested package premised on an ahistorical postulate, that there is a continuing and ever-distinct “Britishness”, and that it is, somehow, a good thing.

Ironically if ‘Britishness’ is to supply the missing “over-arching narrative”, then history teaching will be less able to address the very issues that gave rise to its inclusion in the curriculum: Britain’s relations with Europe, the changing make-up of the British population, and the devolution of power to elected assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

What the report calls “the biggest issue for school history” is simply and starkly “its limited place in the curriculum”, i.e. too few young people are spending time studying it. Only 30% of pupils post-14 years of age study history and even fewer post-16. As result, the report notes, they “never consider important historical issues when they are mature enough to do so”.

Why should this be so? Unlike in most of Europe, history is not a compulsory subject in English schools after the age of 14, and there are currently no proposals to remedy that. Instead, the government’s emphasis continues to be on literacy, numeracy, vocational and market-orientated skills, squeezing history to the margins. What’s more, “some policy developers, senior school managers, parents and pupils,” the inspectors complain, “do not perceive history as either relevant or important compared with other subjects.”

One of these appears to be the none other than the chief executive of the government’s Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (the body that demoted Churchill). In response to a question about the role of history in schools, he said: “Are we going to deal with the battle of the Nile or are we instead going to concentrate on how to take out a mortgage and manage it – and use the school time for that purpose?”

In the Battle of the Nile, fought in the summer of 1798, Nelson defeated the French navy and secured British supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean. This was only the beginning, however, of more than a century of British-French competition over control of the fragmenting Ottoman domains – including Iraq, where 5000 British soldiers are currently bogged down fighting an insurgency which can only be understood in a context that includes that imperial competition and indeed the poor old Battle of the Nile.