Events | 2009.11.28
History? It's history | Andrew Martin
If the past is another country, Ed Balls has just confiscated the passports of our schoolchildren
Ed Balls has announced that primary school history is to be subsumed into an "area of learning" called "historical, geographical and social understanding". Personally I did prefer the words "history" and "geography", partly because they\'re shorter. Presumably Balls, who is highly educated, knows that the importation of a value word like "understanding" is a tactic associated with totalitarian regimes. So why does he do it?
Balls says he is strengthening the role of history in primary schools; but Prince Charles apparently doesn\'t think so, and on the face of it the new subject headings will do little to appease the Historical Association , which frets about the dilution of pure history in secondary schools. It is squeezed out by other subjects, subsumed into humanities, and taught in a way that promotes analytical skill, hence that word "understanding". Whether history is being downgraded or not, it seems likely that a party called New Labour, in which every young minister is a bright-eyed technophile, might not be keen on the H-word, and might be tempted to use it as children now do: "You\'re history" does not mean, "You are replete with the riches of civilisation". It means: "You\'re finished."
There also lurks an association between "history" and "British history" with all its embarrassing aspects. The motivation of our empire builders was crassly mercantile, so perhaps we ought not to revisit it. But then again, why does Balls want to foster cross-curricular "understanding" at the expense of traditional subjects? For no more moral reason than to compete in a globalised economy. The pressure of international competition means that we live in a very fast-changing world. Well, I do. Since I became a writer 20 years ago, most of my favourite bookshops have been killed by the internet; Britain has changed from a literary to a visual culture; and the book as a physical artefact is fading.
There is too much of the present just at present, and knowledge of history is an escape from it. It is also a defence against the enthusiasms of the media. While key stage 3 teaches the importance of historical chronology, the recollection of dates is regarded as a bonus rather than being essential, which clashes bizarrely with the obsession with anniversaries among journalists. I was sick of Darwin by about 2 o\'clock on 1 January this year. I prefer to remember other things that happened 150 years ago besides the publication of On the Origin of Species; or it might be that I am interested in some event taking place, say, 83 years ago, which – the intervening time not being a round number – I will have all to myself.
History also shifts the focus from living celebrities to dead ones, and I do prefer my celebrities to be dead. They can\'t profit from their fame; they won\'t be given tables ahead of me in a restaurant; and the fact that their fame has survived death is proof that they were somehow significant.
History is not now compulsory at GCSE level, and it wasn\'t when I was at school either, there being no national curriculum to make it so. But everyone did it. When my eldest son told me he was dropping history, it was as though he\'d said he was having his memory erased – and I can\'t bring myself to write down his answer to my question: When was Disraeli prime minister?
Our government of veneerings might consider that we won\'t appreciate the new if we can\'t call up a mental picture of the old. If we were to take our cue from LP Hartley and his suggestion that "the past is a foreign country," then we might regard the study of history as a kind of multiculturalism, in which case it would escape some of the stigma undoubtedly attaching to it.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]20/history-is-history-ed-balls
