National Curriculum

Lord Caine Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the value of history in helping us to understand today and to learn from the past is one of the purposes of educating children. The only compulsory element on the national curriculum is the study of the Holocaust but, of course, that leads to teachers being able to talk about wider discrimination and prejudice to avoid such events happening again.

[Lord Caine (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support a curriculum that reflects our diverse history and teaches children our national story, warts and all. But does my noble friend agree that it is profoundly unhistorical to teach and interpret the past entirely through the prism of today’s values, and it is wrong to demonise figures from history simply because they held views which, at the time, were the norm in society?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, history, of course, is not just events—history can be that of values, principles and mores. I agree with the noble Lord, who I am sure will be reassured that the guidance sent out by DCMS on the controversial issue of statues is to consider those figures in their context and contextualise the involvement of that person in our history.