The less history people know, the easier it is to use the same scams against them again and again.

History should not be an option: it is a compulsory part of our shared knowledge and culture, forming our national identity. To continue down the road of its slow eradication in schools is to risk losing this common identity for future generations.

History should be a compulsory subject because how can you understand the present if you do not understand the past? But I would teach it for that reason, rather than some social-engineering fools errand of forging a 'common identity'. We are never going to have a common identity when we are divided by class.

Well hurrah to that. I'm astonished that there has apparently been a policy decision to allow so vital a subject as history to go the way of Latin and Greek. How people are meant to get to grips with their own culture without a basic understanding of matters and events like the Norman Conquest, the Reformation, the Glorious Revolution, the English Civil War, the intertwining histories of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and all the rest of it, I have no idea. History informs and is informed by other subjects such as English literature, religious studies, geography and modern languages. And surely, at root, an understanding of history is part of what it means to be a civilised, cultured human being?

Agree almost 100%.
The focus in British schools should be on British history ( within limits, nothing wrong with doing the Pharohs etc for "fun" and interest where time permits) .

There is simply too much history for any meaningful understanding to be gained by the present "hopping here, hopping there" approach.

My daughter is currently studying GCSE History and wants to go on to do A level. She informed me the other day that , despite studying the Nazis etc for about a year, there was a young gentleman in her class who was unaware that the Swastika was their symbol ( and this from a school that gets excellent results).
My daughter's a bright girl ( gets it from me, no doubt) but has a very poor understanding of chronology.
It's a real shame.

The author seems to think that teaching British History, and only British History, would "unite us as one nation". He thinks that a narrative (factual) plod through British History would improve the numbers taking it up at GCSE.

Needless to say, this monkey sitting on the shoulder of the organ-grinder Michael Gove offers not a scrap of evidence to support either of these highly questionable assertions.

I agree History is in serious decline in schools. I would suggest that if Mr. Skidmore's proposals were put into effect, that decline would rapidly increase.

We need to scrap media and business studies as well as most of the BTEC National Diplomas and the NVQ's in Public Services.

I am a medieval and early modern history graduate who very seriously considered becoming a teacher... and then I realised I couldn't face a lifetime of teaching Hitler's Germany and the American Civil Rights movement.

I agree wholeheartedly that the History curriculum needs a complete revamp and that letting it fade away is a big, big mistake.

Ironic, then that one of the original aims of "Doctor Who" was as an educational aid to the teaching of history...

I think you have a point there. The schools seem to make a big effort to promote each course as being "equal" which, fairly naturally, leads to pupils choosing the more "fun" options.
A couple of my daughter's friends, really bright "top set" kids, have dropped subjects like History and Geography in favour of Drama and ICT ( which , at GCSE level, is pretty basic).
To me it seems a real waste.

History should not be an option: it is a compulsory part of our shared knowledge and culture, forming our national identity.

I couldn't disagree more. The problem is this:

A subject which should unite us ...

Real history is contested, alive, exciting but does not unify people. You (and virtually everyone who argues in favour of 'teaching history') are not interested in history. You really want to teach children to think like you.

Studying what information is available, rather like in science, and drawing conclusions (with suitable error bars), is what history really should be. But you can't allow that, can you? People might conclude things they are not supposed to. Instead students are only permitted to study documents and 'facts' from the eras and events where there really isn't any doubt who the good people were.

I might have stuck with history past the age of 14 had I not been taught the same thing three years in a row.

I know everything there is to know about the Luftwaffe's blitz of Swansea. Any other history I know is self-taught.

School history lessons were boring and I don't regret ditching it as soon as I possibly could. I got a lot of enjoyment from the alternative Geography course which was relevant and interesting.

I don't personally think the education system should delve too far into promoting a "shared identity". The education system should be teaching skills, and if teaching kids about Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany accomplishes this better than a purely British focused curriculum, so be it.

Ok at 11-14 you may be right in at least starting to teach some of the intellectual rigour of history but thekey to teaching is not to make the subject as dull an lifeless as possible but to create passion for a subject.
Let me use another subject what gave me my early passion for chemistry was not the riogour of understanding molecular formations or claculating the Kc of a particluar reaction it was the putting chemcials toegether and seeing what happened. It wasnt necessarly completely scientifc but it made we want to know more.

Our indoctrination system is an insult to education.

'We should introduce a narrative based exam which covers every aspect of British history.' In Scotland the history curriculum, proposed by Tom Devine, would attempt to create a similar course which would emphasize Scottish rather than British history.
It is unlikely that a consensus on this can be achieved.

Hell they won't be able to analyse source material but they'll sure know their dates!

"1066, 1415, 1588, 1805, 1815......."

I agree with headinthesandman, and I would add that there is British history that doesn't get taught because if it did, we'd be ashamed of our nation and what has been done in its name. Maybe chronological would be a better approach, but national identity is, as far as I can see, more relevant to politics than to history.

Teaching history chronologically is all very sensible, but it won't be long before newspapers and politicians will start moaning that 13 year olds know nothing about the Holocaust/Waterloo/The Armada/Indian Mutiny etc. etc and accusing schools of dumbing down and destroying our common culture.

History in schools bears no more resemblance to the thought processes of the young. My experience is from the '70s but I think the way it is taught today is not a lot better.

The important thing is experience and an interest to know, and that comes to some people later in life, not all, by any means. Most subjects in school are aiming for examination results, little more, both for the teachers and the pupils.

Keo2008:

The author seems to think that teaching British History, and only British History, would "unite us as one nation". He thinks that a narrative (factual) plod through British History would improve the numbers taking it up at GCSE

I don't agree. Whle he discusses the importance of our shared history, there's no suggestion that experiences of it are identical.

I don't understand peoples' fairly disdainful view of British history - yes Michael Gove and Simon Schama may try to bend history to suit a conservative outlook; but ours is an incredibly complex and rich history which proves highly subversive to any study of past and present society. It's also a vital means of undermining long-standing prejudices which continue to colour peoples' perceptions of the world; and for me certainly, it's an extremely enjoyable subject to study. I wouldn't limit history to our national one by any means; but it's important nonetheless. It lends itself to valuble insights into issues such as crime, poverty, gender - all of which continue to challenge people today. And it's a keystone of imagination and memory: people once trod the earth before us; they are no longer here. It's the same process of time passing that we will be a part of ourselves - our history is important to the future; just as the past is to us.

History in schools is a victim of our utilitarian view of education. It seems to be accepted that the role of education is to get a job. What job would result from a qualification in History? This is a sad state of affairs as History offers us an opportunity for us to learn from our past.

Why History is not a mandatory subject at GCSE level I do not know, it seems very irresponsible to allow young people to drop it when they are just 14 - just when the important themes and debates are taught and discussed.

When I was at secondary school (I am 23) I had to choose two subjects to continue at GCSE out of Geography, History, Drama, ICT, Business and Media. Business = going on trips to Ikea, argos etc... and then writing about it. Media = watching films and then writing about them. Its not surprising that most people pick the last two.

Btw ICT is not a dossing subject, it is actually an extremely dense and complex subject that combines maths, statistics and formulae calculation into spreadsheets and data production, such as excel. It is extremely useful for most computer-related jobs.

I share the authors concern about declining popularity of history in schools, but this -

A subject which should unite us as one nation

Just makes me shudder.

Education as indoctrination is just the sort of nonsense you would expect from a Tory MP.

We should introduce a narrative-based exam which covers every age in British history across a broad chronological span.

I support this on one condition: it is my version of the 'British narrative' that is taught.

You might find it is a rather different narrative to yours Chris. But hey, if we're not going to teach kids historiography - leaving them without a critical understanding of the construction of historical narratives and the political and economic interests driving them - then it had better be my version of the narrative dammit!

We should introduce a narrative-based exam which covers every age in British history across a broad chronological span. Only by these means will pupils recognise that the thread of history is a long one, and one which does not always travel in one direction.

I am passionate about history. I strongly believe that people should know more about their history, how what happened in the past shapes the world we live in today.

But what relevance would studying the Norman Conquest have to somebody in a South London comprehensive? And studying the Reformation, or the English Civil War, or the Glorious Revolution may be appropriate; but we also need to understand Irish, Scottish and Welsh history too, and the history of slavery and of Empire, and English affairs in Europe, and the French Revolution, and the Third Reich ..... OK, point made.

This is all geared to building this mythical "national identity" that the current Government are focussing on (when they should, of course, be focussing on the real issue). Teaching our children, by rote, the 'important' dates of history, 1066 and all that, should itself have been consigned to the history books; looks like it may not have been.

And who should design this chronological framework, exactly? Moreover, chronology implies an over-arching narrative. Who's over-arching narrative, exactly?

While I agree that the curriculum needs some wider variety in it, I think it's seriously impractical to suggest a chronological approach. We're talking about thousands of years - you simply cannot squeeze that into the teaching time available without ripping through it at lightning speed and in such minimal detail that it becomes a pointless exercise which doesn't teach the kids very much.

Much better to pick out some choice periods in history and go through them in an adequate amount of depth so that the kids can actually practice the analytical skills which make history so worthwhile a subject. I thoroughly agree that there's much more to history than the Tudors and the Nazis and teh current curriculum doesn't cover enough topics, but trying to cram too much into the time available is not the remedy for that.

As for this:

We should introduce a narrative-based exam which covers every age in British history across a broad chronological span.

This is total head in the clouds stuff. Merely regurgitating that amount of history even without displaying any actual insight into or understanding it would take far longer than any exam could be expected to last.

History is indeed an important subject,no wonder so many youngsters think Churchill's a dog that advertises insurance and Bomber Harris a footballer!

What an excellent article.

All British school children should be taught our island story and be encouraged to then study an exteneded period like Tudors and Stuarts or George III through the to the end of Victoria's reign. That would give them a much better understanding of our British background than what they are taught these days.

Never mind history, someone should teach the headline writer English grammar. The Guardian's own Style Guide explains the difference between like and as if. The headline writer should read it. So, could it be changed to "History cannot be taught as if it were a Doctor Who time-travelling fantasy", please?

I think the writer of the article probably should not be associated with the criticism I make above. In parargraph 6, there is pretty much the same sentence as the headline, but correctly with "as if it were" rather than the wrong "like it is". So the odds are that a Guardian person wrote the headline.

My daughter is currently studying GCSE History and wants to go on to do A level. She informed me the other day that , despite studying the Nazis etc for about a year, there was a young gentleman in her class who was unaware that the Swastika was their symbol ( and this from a school that gets excellent results).

I hope you went on to explain to her that the swastika has a huge, long and fascinating past and that it remains a symbol of peace in many countries. That China still has an aid agency called the red Swastika. And that it is precisely through the anipulation of historical narratyives that the Nazis were able to steal the swastika for their evil purposes for 15 years or so, and that many in Europe even now cannot use it is its true and proper sense.

I say this not to be rue to you - I am certain you knwo all this. But for me the history of the swastika is an excellent case study in what happens when people don't learn about history beyond their own shores.

I'm in Year 11, and I'm actually surprised at how few students take history around the country. In my school, I'd say about 60-70% of students in my year take it (I'm not from a posh school or anything, just a normal one in Norfolk).

I do agree that history should be taught differently. For example, at my school in KS3 you learn about the Romans and Tudors first, then move onto the Civil War and Industrial Revolution, before skipping to World War One and the rise of Hitler. In GCSE, we did Medicine Through Time and the American West, as well as a local study on the Tolhouse. For the AS/A Level I'll do in history, I'll have to study Hitler, Russia from 1900-53, a century of warfare from 1840-1939 and a bit on British history over the same period. Although these subjects do cover thousands of years, they don't seem to have any connection.

A much better way to teach this would be to make history compulsory until 16, and focus on neglected areas of history. For example, in my education there is quite a big gap from the Vikings to the Tudors (with the exception of 1066) that hasn't been taught. The Middle Ages were almost totally ignored. People my age have no knowledge of things such as the Crusades, Peasant's Revolt or the Hundred Years War. More focus should be put into these areas.

For GCSEs, I think part of it should be an idependent piece of coursework on the subject of the student's choice. This means that students don't become bored of things that don't interest them (personally I think that the Battle of Little Bighorn is particularly boring), and study more areas that do (for me this would be the Cold War or post-1950s Africa).

The value of History in school for me was that it taught me to abandon all preconceptions I had for any topic and examine the evidence objectively from a wide number of perspectives as possible. It also taught me that very few subjects are as clear cut as popular opinions on them would have us believe.

Talk of history ‘uniting us’ is nonsense. If a history teacher find their entire class in agreement on any subject they haven’t done their job properly. A good history lesson should evoke plenty of varied responses to the same question.

History is extremely important. But the way the working world is going, who can blame a young person, and their parents, for having a stronger tilt towards IT, Business Studies etc? it's not good but that is the way things are. Not sure how you combat that.

Hmm so perfidious Albion and the pesky Albanian are the only ones that don't indoctrinate their young with some kind of approved view of history.
GOOD!
Lets keep it as it is. Albania and the UK, the last 2 freedom of thought countries on the continent.. If no-one likes us. We don't care!

My post above is full of typos - my apologies.

I spent my younger years learning British history with some classics from Greeks and Romans thrown in for good measure. I have spent a lifetime since learning world history (a fulfilling subject).

Kids and adults alike for the best part cannot tell you why they speak English in places like Australia / America, ask them who Caratacus was and they respond with blank looks or guess its a plant.

Its not jingoism its not nationalism its not shameful, its history and its our heritage and our past. Focusing on English / British history while in England / Britain should be standard.

Bombarding them with unrelated topics does nothing but confuse them. Provide them with a solid foundation and like other history lovers they will go from there and flourish.

A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. "Churchill"

Give every kid at age 8 a full set of the old Ladybird "Kings and Queens of England" or whatever it was called, and job's a good'un.

You can then do your flitting between eras and focussing on bits, safe in the knowledge that they have a firm, if simple, grasp of the chronology of the nation.

Don't make it compulsory to 16 - make it compulsory to have learned something by 14. Actually, that goes for everything. Kids are being massively let down currently.

I left school in 1997, and am the only person I know who avoided studying the nazis, seems like it is compulsory these days! Having studied history at GCSE, A-level, BA and MPhil, I would take issue with your including the history of medicine module as a waste of time - I did this at GCSE and found it absolutely fascinating, as I recall you get to look at a variety of different cultures and times, with the development of medical understanding as the common linking theme - we studied the ancient Greeks, Islamic medics like Ibn Sinna (before it was trendy to do so), William Harvey and the circulation of the blood, up to Semmelweiss, Florence Nightingale and so on. I can still remember loads about it! And very useful for understanding history as a continuum rather than isolated events, more effectively than your proposed whistlestop tour of British history could achieve. - we don't exist in a vacuum!

A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. "Churchill"

Very true. But a country that doesn't seek to understand other countries and their history is doomed to have poor relations with them.

History cannot be taught: it has to be learned. Children aren't interested, they don't have the foundations. That's why so many adults - who dumped history at school - turn to it in later years.

Personally I think there's already too much focus on British history, I mean did I really need to know about Henry and his six wives, seems like I spent entire years being taught that. There's just too much history to really cover all of it even broadly, it would be much better and more likely to spark interest in students to cover specific events for extended periods of times, rather than a progression of kings and queens.

History will not be taught in school, it can't be. The author has virtually admitted that he is proposing some form of indoctrination, based, I assume, on a list of kings and queens and dates upon which "we" either beat up Johnny Foreigner, or else introduced him to civilisation, pretty much the same thing really.

Instead, in the three years available, a somewhat limited time, we could encourage children to take an interest in their past and teach them how to study, how to analyse and how to question what they are told, how to reject the bullshit presented to them both from the past and in the present.

Since MPs' livelihoods depend upon people not seeing through the bullshit, I can't see this happening.

Hell they won't be able to analyse source material but they'll sure know their dates!

"1066, 1415, 1588, 1805, 1815......."

Come on, this is a straw argument. No reason why kids can't learn to do both. And if they don't know when things happened, and the sequence of events before and after, how the hell are they supposed to analyse anything?

They always were obsessed with the Nazis and Stalin who cares, not relevant to nowadays. Subjects relevant to nowadays they should teach about are the collapse of the Roman Empire, the collapse of the Mayans, the collapse of Easter Island. The Tulip bubble. The establishment of the Federal reserve and the torpedoing of the Titanic (whoops sorry I mean accidental sinking),, the purchase of the intellectual copyright laws by large corporations to PREVENT improvements coming to market. Blah Blah Blah.

The point I am trying to make is how woud you like being forced to do MY history course. No-one should be forced to do the STATE'S history course likewise.

It would however be extremely cool for the class to be taken on a ride in the tardis by Dr Who and Billy, to go and see for themselves what went on in the olden days. If this can be brought in I will have to change my tune.

" ...less than 30% of pupils..." I suppose you mean fewer than 30%, or do you queue in the "5 items or less" in Tesco's? 30% means 30 in 100, you see. 30 is a number.

@orthus

"Instead, in the three years available"

That's the real problem - there are far more than three years available and if we stop fucking about with things we could teach history properly.

Oh, and the thing about the study of history "uniting us" is rubbish. The aim is not to "unite" us -- class, geography and gender will always ensure conflict -- but to give us a common framework for the arguments we inevitably conduct, which means enabling us as citizens in a democracy.

I studied your traditional history as taught in schools some forty-fifty years ago. It was a compulsory subject at my school anyway. Screeds and screeds of The Treaty of This and The Battle of That. It wasn't until I'd left school that I realised how much had been left out in order to include all those treaties and get us up to 1914.

Social history is what got left out. The social impact of the Reformation, the enclosure acts, the poor law acts, married women's proprty acts, Mayhew, dangerous trades, Wilberforce, Shaftesbury, Nightingale - they achieved a brief mention or none at all.

Face it - something has to go. What goes, these days, will depend on the agenda of the Ministry of Education or its equivalent. I suggest the most anyone can hope for is to inspire pupils with the interest to go ook for themselves, and equip them with the skills in source analysis to evaluate what they read or see.