…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? Read the rest of this entry »
