Schools: History

Lord Smith of Clifton Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Clifton]

My Lords, as I come at the end of the Back-Bench contributions to this debate, much of what I might have said has already been said. Nevertheless, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Luke, for initiating the debate. From the speeches that we have heard, it seems that there is little consensus in this House except on two things: first, that history is very important; and, secondly, that it is in financial crisis—it is a problem about provision both in schools and in universities.

In schools, as many noble Lords have said, there is a need to impart a sense of continuity and sequence of the past. However, as my noble friend Lord Addington said, history is now so vast that it would take almost a lifetime—you would certainly have to enrol in the University of the Third Age—to complete an in-depth study from the early times to the present.

We must get away from the notion that history had a golden past. My own history education lacked any sense of continuity or sequence. I learnt about the Romans and the Vikings, then jumped to the Tudors and the Stuarts. Finally, at A-level, I studied 19th and 20th-century European and British—by which I mean essentially English—history. As a result, I knew very little about the medieval period and the 18th century, and virtually nothing about the histories of Ireland, Scotland and Wales or the United States. Never once in those far-off days when we took O-level and A-level in history were we required to examine original sources. History education has come a long way in recent years by requiring pupils at quite a young age and subsequently to learn how to use original sources. In my case, the fragmented and disjointed knowledge of history that I acquired was not at all unique. Others have mentioned that they had similar experiences.

The school curriculum, even if it cannot cover the whole course of history, should, as my good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Morgan, said, take sufficiently long a period so that one can convey a sense of sequence and development. That requires that history should be accorded a secure place in the syllabus at both primary and secondary levels. Michael Gove, the Secretary of State, has clearly recognised this.

The curriculum should not be chauvinistic or xenophobic, although I have to say—here I echo the reservations of the noble Lord, Lord Davies—that Mr Gove’s approach seems to hint at this. It should not concentrate just on monarchy, the military and empire. Rather, as many noble Lords have said, it should give an appreciation of other aspects. In a devolved kingdom, particularly, we should these days have a sense of the history of Ireland, Scotland and Wales if we are to maintain some sense of a United Kingdom. There have been many criticisms that recent and contemporary history predominates and that, as the noble Lord, Lord Bew, said, students come up to university knowing about Hitler but have not gone much further than that. In my experience when I was in Northern Ireland, my daughter took a GCSE in history and was compelled to take a paper in the history of Ireland. That stopped quite abruptly at 1919, for obvious reasons, so it is not always contemporary. In certain circumstances, you find that you are not allowed to look at more contemporary features.

As my noble friend Lady Benjamin and others have said, there must be a large focus on the UK’s position in the world. As was said earlier, if the habit of continuous military adventurism persists there is a strong case for giving a hefty dose of the history of the Middle East. Perhaps Afghanistan would make a good special paper at A-level and any intending candidates for cadetships at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst should be required to take that as a pre-requisite for application.

At university level, history is almost in extremis. As the debate in your Lordships’ House last week on the condition of the English universities illustrated, in speech after speech, the arts and humanities—of which history is a main constituent—were shown to be in dire straits. It is significant that in the Guardian today the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, an eminent medical scientist, very eloquently comes out defending the arts, social sciences and the humanities as being equally vital alongside more vocational subjects and disciplines.

Not only is the teaching of history at risk but, as others have remarked, the quality of historical research is being jeopardised. It is research that nurtures university teaching which, in turn, informs and keeps fresh the teaching in schools. The future history teachers in our country are being short-changed, and will be increasingly so, by the parsimony of university funding. In every sense, history will not take kindly to the financial treatment currently being meted out to it. Along with others, I ask the Minister whether he is able to offer any crumbs of comfort that will convincingly provide grounds for a degree of optimism in this regard.