History lessons shouldn't be a thing of the past (From Watford Observer)

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History lessons shouldn't be a thing of the past

10:49am Monday 23rd November 2009

I never know where I am with Prince Charles: sometimes his pronouncements utterly infuriate me, while others find me nodding in agreement.

Considering the fact that the heir apparent has an opinion on pretty much everything, from climate change to the recipe for ginger biscuits (his Duchy Original ones are really rather good, by the way), and is not afraid to share it, I suppose it’s not surprising that he often divides the public.

Unlike his rather wonderful mother, who I suspect has equally firm views on an even wider range of subjects, but is far too diplomatic to air them, HRH The Prince of Wales is only too happy to let rip every time something annoys him, which proves that he’s clearly inherited a lot of his father’s genes, too.

The Prince’s latest broadside has been aimed at plans to sideline traditional subjects such as history and geography in the primary school curriculum in favour of ‘themed’ study areas.

In the brave new educational world envisaged by Children’s Secretary Ed Balls, 13 stand-alone subjects will be merged into six ‘areas of learning’. Poor old history and geography now find themselves lumped into something calling itself ‘historical, geographical and social understanding’.

Allegedly, this amorphous theme will include ‘some’ British history, but the Government’s latest batch of fresh-faced and woolly-brained education advisers reckon that the subject content has to be reduced to make room for ‘social issues’ including… yes, you’ve guessed it - global warming.

Greater emphasis on using technology in lessons will also see primary school children using Google Earth to study geography and blogging to improve their English.

The mind boggles, doesn’t it?

I mean, have you seen the state of the majority of blogs out there? The rules of basic grammar and spelling are generally so far beyond the grasp of the average blogger that the thought of using this bilge as a tool to teach children English is utterly terrifying.

No wonder Prince Charles is feeling dyspeptic. He’s usually quite keen on environmental matters, but the prospect of something like global warming replacing his own family history in primary school classrooms throughout the land has really upset him.

And quite right, too. I have to say this is one of those occasions when I find myself in total agreement with the Prince.

It’s probably a deeply unfashionable view, but I do think that having a decent, chronological grasp of the history of the country where you live, along with a working knowledge of the geography of that country and the rest of the world is a pretty fundamental component of primary education.

And secondary education, too, for that matter.

Several years ago, I was astonished to work with a younger colleague who had, apparently, studied geography at university. Although she could (and often did) bore for hours about the evils of the British Empire, when it came to simple work tasks like locating Brighton on a map of England when booking rail tickets for the team or knowing where exactly Denmark was in Europe when we hosted a delegation of Danes, she had absolutely no idea.

(She actually thought that Denmark was land-locked and next to Switzerland, by the way).

Ignoring the basics of the subject (an atlas springs to mind), her geography degree had clearly hovered like a bluebottle over a smorgasbord of vaguely related ‘themed’ areas of study, leaving her hugely opinionated, but cruelly under-informed.

This ‘themed’ system of education is obviously the model about to be unleashed in primary classrooms, with children expected to absorb knowledge of individual subjects served up to them like a big gooey trifle. There will be a layer of history, a layer of geography, and a layer of ‘social understanding’ (whatever that is, to quote Prince Charles).

To me this just sounds superficial, completely confusing and very difficult to deliver.

In terms of teaching history to primary school children, what is so wrong with starting with something like Stonehenge and the Beaker People and then working forward chronologically?

It’s what we did at Cassiobury School in the late 1960s and I can still remember enjoying lessons about the Romans and the Vikings when I was about six years old. I also remember that following on from that we learned about the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest and then gradually worked our way forward each school year until by the time I was 11 and about to change schools we were up to the Great War and the horrors of the trenches.

In the preceding years we’d made models of Henry VIII and his six wives, dressed up as Roundheads and Cavaliers, ‘traded’ tea and coffee as pretend merchants and written highly imaginative essays based on our supposed experiences as urchins living like Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger on the mean streets of Victorian London.

I don’t for a moment claim that any of us had an in-depth knowledge of history by the time we left, but we definitely had a keen grasp of the timescales involved and of most of the pivotal, defining moments that have shaped Britain as it is today.

We could also look at a map of the world and confidently identify nearly every major country.

I put our primary school success in subjects like history and geography largely down to our form teacher, Mr Felton.

Clearly a frustrated sailor, young, energetic Mr Felton managed to work boats and the history of shipping into nearly every lesson. I still have my history work book from the fourth year at Cassiobury where highly technical annotated drawings of the Armada’s Spanish galleons and Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hind have been painstakingly copied in my infant hand from the blackboard.

There’s also a hugely complicated diagram of 18th century cargo routes spanning the globe, including notes about wind directions and seasonal weather variations round the Capes!

By the time I arrived at Westfield School in the early 1970s, I think the teachers were frankly amazed at my in-depth knowledge of Phoenician boat building. I was also intimately acquainted with the layout of Nelson’s Victory and what I couldn’t tell you about the structure of an Arab dhow wasn’t worth knowing.

Which all goes to show, I suppose, that you can present broad areas of knowledge in ‘themed’ chunks, but in order to make that knowledge intelligible and memorable to a small child you probably need a prince among teachers.