"Pupil history knowledge ‘patchy’"

…according to Ofsted, The Guardian and the BBC. Mmm. Yes. But I’ve seen or heard no mention during this debate about the almost complete lack of knowledge (due to lack of inclusion in the Curriculum) of any contemporary history. This shocks, disappoints and greatly angers me – as both ‘a historian’ and a C21st ‘citizen’.

Whenever I deal with undergraduates or teenagers (and even some ‘mature’ academics) I am constantly stunned at their complete ignorance of the history of recent decades; the very decades into which they, their friends, their parents and their teachers were born. The defence offered is almost universal: ‘Ah, but that was before my time.’ My stock responses to that are a) most of it was well before my time too – you are wrong to assume otherwise b) you’re a historian – what kind of feeble excuse is that? c) VE Day and the Battle of Hastings weren’t before your time?

I cannot comprehend how sentient human beings can function on a day-to-day basis without an awareness of the immediate historical context – social, cultural, political and economic – which has shaped both the society within which we all now interact and them as individuals within that society. Our ‘hard-wiring’ is, of course, influenced by the events of the long durée. But surely we are at least as much (indeed, I would argue, far more so) a product of the immediate historical context into which we were born?

Hoop Jumping II

A large part of my recent intellectual impasse is due to the H word – ‘historiography’. “I’m examining the historiography”. “I’m surveying the literature”. How these phrases make my heart sink. As grandiose and arrogant as it may sound, my function, surely, is not to praise or damn existing histories, some of which are useful and some of which are not. My job is to (attempt) to write new ones. If ‘the historiography’ was all bad I wouldn’t be working in this discipline at all. But if it was all good I would have nothing to add.

‘Reading is the enemy of writing’, says a certain Professor at Queen Mary (not, I should add, in the History department). How right he is. There comes a point when, having surveyed as much of the existing territory as is possible, one then has to move on, confident that what is relevant has been assimilated. I’ve yet to develop the confidence to know when I’ve reached this point. I’m not a natural rebel, and can be hamstrung by my own ‘conscientiousness’. I’m not good at ‘winging it’. I tend to slog on, trying to absorb it all, worrying that I may have missed something vitally ‘canonical’, until I reach a point where, frankly, I’ve sickened myself and my head is about to explode. Part of the make-up of those who revel in academic ‘Hoop Jumping’ is an almost orgasmic reaction to the word ‘historiography’. I, on the other hand, react to it with a sense of (non post-coital) depression. The Educating Rita definition of ‘What is Historiography?’ simply has to be: historians talking to historians about other historians. And yes, most of them are White, Male and Dead – although I’m never quite sure which ones. It all smacks of a Hierarchy (if not a self-perpetuating oligarchy), an Establishment, a Canon – which is, after all, what some of us are unashamedly seeking to challenge, and perhaps, at least in part, to smash. But even in the relativist, multi-culturalist, supposedly egalitarian and multi-vocal new millennium, this is dangerous talk: one will be labelled “An Old Leftie” or, worse still, what the culturalists would term “The Other”.

In order to be accepted by The Profession (as historians nowadays, like estate agents and hairdressers, love to call themselves) one has to submit to its discursive norms. This has proved as true as in my experience with the musical and theatrical Professions. One has to gain entry into the tent in order to then be able to piss all over it; or, at the very least, to re-arrange the furniture. This ‘entryist’ line is a tricky one to walk alone. Inspiration and support are required. To paraphrase Benjamin Britten, once one has learned the rules of Western harmony and counterpoint one can break them all – but only after they have been learned. Likewise, actors, despite what they may say on chat shows, very rarely subscribe to the polar opposites of The Method, or the Old School dictum of ‘learn your lines and don’t bump into the scenery’. They develop a system, a (lower-case) method, which works for them as individuals, and varies according to the role/project in hand. A bit of this and a bit of that; an eclectic cross-section of influences, plus the unashamed influence of personal experience (when it is relevant) – these are what fuse into an individual ‘voice’, in whatever field one is working. Don’t they?

Well, there is some real hope, in the contrasting and uber-canonical voices of Raymond Williams and Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. FFN provides, for me, both realism and vindication:

“History, in short, has multiplied; indeed, it has exploded. The work of professional historians has never been as multifarious…Above all, the numbers of professional historians have exploded with the expansion of higher education. The results have been mixed. They include the curse of over-specialization: historians dig ever deeper, narrower furrows in ever more desiccated soil until the furrows collapse and they are buried under their own aridity…Deeper in the public arena, we seem to have forgotten how to influence debate and policy on the leading issues of the day…History is the most open and accessible of academic disciplines. Everybody can do it – indeed everybody does do it, because everybody has experience of the past and all people have privileged access to the sources of their own stories. It requires no special training, except in modest skills which any literate person can easily and quickly pick up without help. There are good reasons for being a graduate student in history, but the acquisition of peculiar professional competence, or of esoteric or hieratic knowledge, is not one of them…As well as including all people, history should include all disciplines. If I remember correctly, my reason for becoming a historian was the sheer voracity of my interests. Unable to choose between the disciplines which attracted me, I fixed on the one which included a little of all the others.”
F Fernandez-Armesto, ‘Epilogue: What is History Now?’, D Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now? (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), pp.149, 150, 152.

Williams famously wrote:
“I can work in these general fields only to the limit of my own interests, and do not suppose these to be ideally complete. Indeed I have already risked an extension and variety of themes will beyond the limits of any kind of academic prudence, for what seems to me the good reason that there is no academic subject within which the questions I am interested in can be followed through; I hope one day there might be, for it was quite obvious from the discussion of Culture and Society that the pressure of these questions was not only personal but general.”
R Williams, The Long Revolution (London: Chatto & Windus, 1961), pp.ix-x.

This is often interpreted as the clarion call which launched the discipline of Cultural Studies, from which I firmly believe all in the Humanities can learn an enormous amount. However, given that Williams was, in fact, a Professor of Drama, I prefer to adopt it as a manifesto which allows the moulding of any discipline to the task in hand, not vice versa. This discipline of ‘History’ is where I’ve landed. It is mine now, as much as anyone else’s. I’ve been allowed into the tent. The primary objective for 2006 is, therefore, some major spring-cleaning. Let’s see just how far ‘academic prudence’ can be stretched: how much ‘the one’ can be made to include ‘a little of all the others’.

Enough rumination for now. As of 9th January the Independent Research Proper begins, and this site will revert to a 1960s/70s smorgasbord. Ready or not, it is now time for nothing other than what the funding bodies would love to hear me call My Original Contribution To The Field.

Hoop Jumping I

This is the first of an occasional series of posts on the academic, personal and regulatory demands which are placed on MPhil/PhD candidates. This can, of course, only reflect my own experience of the day-to-day nuts-and-bolts of Actually Doing And Getting That PhD. These ‘Hoop Jumping’ posts will be unashamedly subjective, reflective, ruminative; sometimes optimistic, sometimes bitter – but undoubtedly cathartic. They may strike some chords with others going through similar experiences in the cathedrals, theme-parks, morgues and play-houses of academia around the country and the world. They may be of interest or use to no-one other than me.

But at the end of the first term and start of the second, where am I on the enthusiasm/progress/wisdom-of-starting-this-whole-endeavour scale? How does is it all feel? How can I fix what doesn’t feel good? How can I maintain what does? How can I cope better with jumping through the academic, regulatory hoops and deadlines which appear in my path, offering little help – and often hindrance by the bucket-load – in getting on with the job I am being funded to do?

I will offer one major piece of advice to anyone considering starting a PhD in the Humanities: don’t waste a moment of your time, let alone any of your money, on the plethora of “How to get/Should I do a PhD” books. Some are more intelligent and intelligible than others, but that’s not the point. The simple fact of the matter is this: if you need to read them you are not ready to do a PhD (and perhaps never will be). They stress only two key points: i) find a supervisor with whom you believe you can develop a productive working relationship ii) research a subject which engages you. Ye gods! Which ill-informed sadomasochist would choose to enter into PhD hell for a minimum of three years without both of these as prerequisites? Yet large numbers do. Numerous last-minute funding opportunities in an unknown university, working on a research topic of little interest to the candidate, with a supervisor they’ve never met (and will probably rarely meet) can be grasped every October. Or there is, for some, the ‘self-funding’ route – effectively, buy a PhD.

For my part, the idea of a candidate scrabbling after the letters DPhil at all costs – and an institution cynically helping them to do so – is utterly abhorrent. I couldn’t do it, but many can, which is why so many pointlessly microscopic theses are churned out every year by ‘Historians’ whose wider hinterland is non-existent. Regardless of their chronological age, many of these people are, in terms of their wider emotional and intellectual development, little more than children. Many have never functioned outwith the education system. Some never will. Many never want to. But by god, do these people know how to jump through academic hoops – which they should do, as the heart-breaking fact is that their objective is, or becomes, nothing other than getting a PhD in Getting A PhD. This term has made it abundantly clear to me that I am not one of them. Sometimes I envy them. For about five minutes.

I spent six months agonizing over whether I should even embark on a PhD. I did not jump at the first flattering noises which were made in my direction; nor should anyone, because they’re really not as flattering as they may sound at the time. All they signal is recognition of a basic level of competence. They do not signify the start of a glittering career, less still any interest in the proposed candidate as an individual – let alone a fulfilling and happy life. We should never forget that much of the life of the contemporary academic consists of getting ‘bums on seats’, be they undergraduate, postgraduate or research. That’s not cynicism, it’s reality. From the first moment I allowed myself seriously to entertain the thought of further research, I was adamant with myself and others that the right supervisor and research area were utterly essential to me. This first term has proved me absolutely correct on both of these counts.

I should, therefore, be celebrating these two achievements. I’ve made good progress in clarifying precisely what I’m going to be addressing in my thesis. And I’ll be saying little more about my supervisor other than that he has rarely put a foot wrong in relation to me so far. His is brilliant at his job, generous with his time and, in general, a bloody good bloke (see Trench Fever.) So I’m optimistic on those fronts.

But what else is there to deal with? Why the pervasive sense of frustration? And should I be panicking that I feel such frustration already? More to follow.