Schools: History

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Luke for securing today’s important debate. As previously outlined by the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell and Lady Walmsley, history is thankfully back in fashion. People are spending time researching their family history on the internet, and “A History of Ancient Britain” and “Mixed Britannia” are just some of the 36 episodes of historical programming available today on BBC iPlayer. I do not approach this debate as a TV producer, professional educationalist or historian but merely as the recipient of inspired history teaching at GCSE and A-level.

However, at the age of 18 I would have been a disappointment to many in your Lordships’ House. I had no overall timeline of British history. I would have struggled to give the correct century for the Battle of Waterloo; I had not covered a world war; and I just thought that it was quite curious that some borders in Africa happened to be straight lines. I know that I am not alone in that experience, as friends of mine spent a new-year holiday watching the boxed set of Simon Schama’s TV series “A History of Britain” back to back.

Over many years now, I have been privileged to know some of Britain’s black and ethnic-minority communities. I have watched as politicians and commentators have flailed around with concepts like multiculturalism and trying to redefine Britishness. Obviously the teaching of history in schools is not a silver bullet and I am not for one minute suggesting that we make teachers responsible for national identity. But I have become convinced that inspired teaching of our national story is an essential element in forming our national identity, which includes the English story and the multicultural story.

I say the “English story” deliberately. As a wise friend of mine said, people identify as British Asians, not English Asians. The teaching of the English story in schools is essential to the British identity and it has been, until recently, the missing part. Why is that? It should be simple—start perhaps with King Alfred and tell the narrative. But many of the English still do not know how to, or some say are not willing to, deal with parts of the national story.

In 2007, I was involved in organising an event to commemorate the bicentennial of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. Again, politicians and commentators seemed unsure about how to handle the anniversary. Is it a celebration? Is it a commemoration? Do we apologise? This lack of national peace over contentious events does little to assist our history teachers who have to teach this without making white children feel bad and black children feel angry. It is not an easy task. As if the Empire and the transatlantic slave trade were not difficult enough, in the post-9/11 American response, President George W Bush saw fit to use the word “crusade”. I think many of the English wanted to go and hide. But national peace with our history will not come if children are not even taught the basic content of it. Analysis of events you do not even know about is of course impossible.

Simon Schama, the Government’s adviser on the national curriculum, puts it like this:

“Without this renewed sense of our common story—one full of contention not self-congratulation—we will be a poorer and weaker Britain”.

I believe we have been poorer and weaker as a people who do not know their own story and identity are more vulnerable to malevolent influences such as the EDL and the BNP.

In some senses Britain has always been multicultural as we are made up of four nations. Over the last 60 years, however, Britain has sought to include millions of people who often have a different heritage, culture and tradition. Without a strong English story being taught and known, who knows what these newer communities were expected to integrate with? However, the change in the British population means that the teaching of the nation’s history in schools is a more varied and perhaps a more challenging task. We all need to know why Britain is the way it is.

I remember one sunny afternoon at Hampton Court Palace when I happened to notice that virtually all the visitors were white. This caused me to reflect, and I realised that I felt connected to the history I was seeing there because my ancestors, whoever they were, were around at the time of Henry VIII. I did wonder, however, if the same could be said for some of my black friends. Maybe not, because the history of their ancestors at that time would of course be elsewhere. Some British black people will feel just as connected as I do but many will not. As a young black Londoner, Sam Kamasu, said to me only yesterday, young black people are not engaging with history as much as they should. Black youth in particular has such a multilayered history because black is such a large cluster—African and Caribbean, for instance. Many young people from this group struggle to find what history to connect with, especially second and third-generation migrants. At times they might find it difficult to identify with current course content. Allowing young people to shape their historical learning by choosing the content from earlier in the academic system may contribute to them being more inspired to keep on learning”.

I would ask the Minister to take this suggestion of allowing more choice in the content of the curriculum to Simon Schama, the Government’s adviser, and to those within Britain’s ethnic minorities whom Mr Schama and of course the department will be consulting with. Although many people acknowledge that the content of the curriculum has improved over recent years, many still feel that it does not appreciate the contribution of or tell the stories of those from Britain’s newer communities. This gap is being filled by initiatives such as Black History Month.

I learnt much about the sacrifice of Commonwealth soldiers in World War 2 from speeches by the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, and novels such as Small Island by Andrea Levy. The Caribbean islanders were apparently never conscripted but chose to fight. It is stories like this that Britain’s Caribbean community want emphasising in the nation’s classrooms.

It is only since joining your Lordships’ House that I have had to begin speaking publicly about multiculturalism and diversity. In my previous role, I would always ask members of Britain’s black community to do this, not least because it is their tale often to tell. “My family history ends with a ship”, said Bishop Wayne Malcolm in 2007 to a dumbstruck audience of 800 people, including the current Prime Minister. “Thank you for your ancestors’ bravery and courage for bringing Christianity, healthcare and education to Ghana. Without their sacrifice, my family and I would not be where we are today”. That is my summary of Reverend Kingsley Appiagyei’s words to MPs, peers and councillors at a training event. Many had never before heard Britain’s contentious missionary history so described.

These perspectives and the courageous stories of migration to the UK need telling in the nation’s classrooms. I wonder if inviting different people into schools to tell their and their families’ stories would aid our history teachers as well as building community relationships. I would be grateful if the Minister would consider this suggestion.

Simon Schama is right. We cannot be self-congratulatory but we may find that some of those most affected by our past are more at ease and forgiving about what happened than the English might expect or indeed deserve. So I would suggest that Britain’s colonial history and the current heritage of the population necessitates that the national history taught in our classrooms contains strands of world history. Rightly or wrongly, Britain has been on the world stage and people came to live here as a result. This could be a tremendously exciting curriculum.

To conclude, it may seem too much perhaps to some people to link teaching history in schools, as I have done, to our national identity but I pray in aid the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, who in his book The Home We Build Together argues for the need for a fragmented Britain to build a covenantally based society; one based on a mutually binding promise to one another sustained by loyalty, fidelity and faithfulness. He argues that a covenantally based society would,

“integrate diversity into national unity without asking anyone to abandon their independence or identity”.

How does the noble Lord suggest such covenantal societies achieve this lofty goal? They tell a story.

So if telling our story in the nation’s classrooms and through the media and around our dinner tables will give us anything like the strong sense of national identity the Jewish people around the world have retained, despite persecution and often living as a diaspora, it is a task well worth undertaking.