News from the New Party

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Making history history

More evidence of the wholesale deterioration of our education system has been brought to light by the decision to abandon the Ancient History 'A' Level, and subsume some of its content into a new Classical Civilisation exam.

Boris Johnson, the Conservative Shadow Education spokesman, journalist and TV presenter, has condemned the decision:

"You might as well say you can learn English history through the study of English language and literature... The birth of Athenian democracy, the transition of Rome from republic to empire: these were critical events in the shaping of our civilisation. How can we understand ourselves if we cut ourselves off from our past?

How indeed? While Boris Johnson is absolutely correct in his comments, it must be noted that the Conservative Party has not been entirely innocent in the violence being done to certain academic subjects in particular. The Thatcher governments were especially guilty of viewing education as a machine for generating skilled and educated employees rather than well-educated, well-balanced individual thinking citizens. Although producing economically productive members of society is no bad thing - and light years better than the Association of Teachers and Lecturers' vision of a nation of certified walking morons, the Tories missed a trick. In the eighties it was possible to view subjects such as the classics, or even history itself, as being luxuries that an economically efficient society need not struggle to afford. In these days, where social cohesion is viewed rather differently, and the fall-out from ill-considered application of multiculturalist theories and the consequences of wider geopolitical developments have become evident, it is now clear that our education system has a vital role to play in inculcating a proper grounding in the fundamentals not only of British society and culture, but of western civilisation generally.

That the British education system is failing in this regard, probably more through design than oversight, is increasingly clear, and the disappearance of the Ancient History 'A' Level is only one small instance of this. The Mail on Sunday reports similar problems elsewhere with regard to history teaching [thanks to Melanie Phillips]:

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.

The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history 'as a vehicle for promoting political correctness'.

The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, looked into 'emotive and controversial' history teaching in primary and secondary schools.

It found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class.

The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.

The report said teachers feared confronting 'anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils'.

It added: "In another department, the Holocaust was taught despite anti-Semitic sentiment among some pupils.

"But the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques."

A third school found itself 'strongly challenged by some Christian parents for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict-and the history of the state of Israel that did not accord with the teachings of their denomination'.

The report concluded: "In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship."

It is an easy charge to blame schools for taking the soft option and refusing to confront difficult subjects in the curriculum. The pressures on schools these days with regard to certain issues with cultural and religious resonance are well known. Nevertheless, the temptation to teach "vanilla history", with all the difficulties and rough edges safely removed, should be keenly resisted, and it should not be too difficult to achieve this. We have just been through a fortnight of national self-flagellation on account of the two hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade by Britain. If our people, and our schoolchildren, have the stomach for this, then they ought also to be able to cope with the Holocaust, the Crusades and the Roman Empire. Always assuming, of course, that they can pass their walking tests.

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