[Ed Waller]

Just wondered if anyone else read the BBC site reporting on Gove's speech to Tory conference BBC Education News.

I particularly shudder at "the proper narrative of British history" and wonder at how we'll resource the implicit elevation to core subject...

Roll up! Roll Up! Teachers required to tell the youth to be proud they're an alpha baby*

*aka British, and with due apologies to Aldous Huxley

[John Perkins]

I don't get it. What planet is this guy on?

[bemused1]

Just watched his speech on Newsnight, despair...

[j hewson]

I've just mind-numbingly read the transcript of his "speech"- I wasn't aware that we were failing kids in History??? I do think that something needs to be done to address the decline of appreciation that our subject enjoys at some levels (maybe because I still teach a GCSE and not a BTEC) but the worry is that instead of helping produce citizens, we will be under a diktat to produce narrow-minded, British-centred Grandchildren of the milk snatcher!

[dwiliamsmts]

Well I am for one all for it. It is a damn sight better than the posts under Labour that people placed on here about History being fazed out. One lesson per week or even as far as simply kids doing Hums not History. OK the curriculum may not be everything you want but it is better than being told oh and by the way you are teaching ICT for most of your timetable. As a Historian I applaud someone who sees the value of my subject and is willing to promote it. Considering the current PM is a History graduate things probably have never been as low for History. We don't stand a chance against the Diplomas with out change. We know that 7 GCSEs for hairdressing and one for History is under valuing us. The Tories are far from perfect but just for a bit it may be nice to have SLT have no chocie but to value us!! Long may the value last.

[DaveStacey]

My problem is that the subject being referred to here, is not the one that I value.

I want students to be able to think critically for themselves, whether they agree with me or not. I'm considerably less keen on the kind of history lessons where one view point is hoisted upon people. It may have worked in the 50s, it simply won't work in a modern, multicultural, connected world.

The idea that people have only one identity simply isn't true for many people in this country today. Sadly, it looks as though that message hasn't got through to many politicians on all sides.

[Giles Falconer]

If a change of government leads to a higher profile for History within the school curriculum (& more teaching time!), them I'm all for it. At the end of the day, after all, we will decide how we teach and what we decide to emphasise...Not the politicians!

[Steve Wales]

The irony is that no one seems to learn from history - i.e the tories are going to be voted back in

[JohnP]

Yes, and in Germany in the 30s the Nazis did a tremendous amount for German history. They distorted it beyond belief.
If possible keep all governments out of History departments as they do nothing but bad. Tories have a poor track record when it comes to History, you only have to remember Baker's sterile efforts and John Major's disastrous 'British' campaign - old maids on bikes cycling through the mist to church- please.It'll be VE parties on your street and back to empire teaching before you know it.

[Dafydd Humphreys]

If/when the Beasts of Eton get elected, it will be the end of History as a subject as Bus-Comms and Telesales GCSEs take over.

[Giles Falconer]

JohnP, on 13 October 2009 - 09:12 PM, said:

Yes, and in Germany in the 30s the Nazis did a tremendous amount for German history. They distorted it beyond belief.
If possible keep all governments out of History departments as they do nothing but bad. Tories have a poor track record when it comes to History, you only have to remember Baker's sterile efforts and John Major's disastrous 'British' campaign - old maids on bikes cycling through the mist to church- please.It'll be VE parties on your street and back to empire teaching before you know it.

And under the current government history is being squeezed out of the curriculum, increasingy restricted to a 2 year KS3, and rapdly gong the way of classics in many schools. Which is better? Which worse?

To me as long as we have the oopportunity to teach historywe can, to an extent, determine what type of history we teach. If it disappears from the school timetable that will be lost, perhaps for ever...