History isn't bunk ... The teaching of history, as it unfolds, should be a higher priority in schools (UK)
Edward Gibbon once said: “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.” It is a lesson that the British nation needs to learn again.
In a recent report on the teaching of history in schools, Ofsted pointed out that, too often, British children had no clear sense of chronology and no vantage point on historical change. For too long, the idea of a story unfolding in real time has given way to a series of fragments, themes ripped out of time. As a result, many pupils are unable to answer history's big questions and do not know enough of the story that brought their nation, and the world of which it is a part, to where it stands today.
That is why it was good to hear Michael Gove, the opposition education spokesman, say that a future Conservative government would insist on the teaching of narrative history. This means teaching history in a chronological order, with a clear exposition of what happened when. This does not mean that history needs to be taught as though it moves inexorably towards the light. It is even more of a simplification, if not a travesty, to tell the story of British liberty as a single, sinuous golden thread, as Macaulay tries to.
Read entire article at Times (UK)
In a recent report on the teaching of history in schools, Ofsted pointed out that, too often, British children had no clear sense of chronology and no vantage point on historical change. For too long, the idea of a story unfolding in real time has given way to a series of fragments, themes ripped out of time. As a result, many pupils are unable to answer history's big questions and do not know enough of the story that brought their nation, and the world of which it is a part, to where it stands today.
That is why it was good to hear Michael Gove, the opposition education spokesman, say that a future Conservative government would insist on the teaching of narrative history. This means teaching history in a chronological order, with a clear exposition of what happened when. This does not mean that history needs to be taught as though it moves inexorably towards the light. It is even more of a simplification, if not a travesty, to tell the story of British liberty as a single, sinuous golden thread, as Macaulay tries to.