Martin Kettle: With No Common Culture in Britain, a Common History is Elusive
[Martin Kettle is an associate editor of the Guardian and writes on British, European and American politics, as well as the media, law and music.]
...[W]arnings surely apply to a labelling in the Guardian this week of Professor Niall Ferguson as a rightwing historian. Ferguson may or may not be usefully described as rightwing. "Irritating" is his own word for that. But he is certainly a historian – author of some formidable books with an occasional weakness for arresting overstatement. Calling him a rightwing historian, though, seems about as relevant as describing Cézanne as an anti-Dreyfusard painter....
This would be a serious mistake, because a lot – not all – of what Ferguson says on this subject is less rightwing than right. There is a lot of similarity between what he said this week and what the late Raphael Samuel, whom one would label a leftwing historian, wrote on the same subject about 20 years ago. Ferguson's argument, set out this week at the Guardian Hay Festival, is that history has been banalised and marginalised in the school curriculum and that both trends need to be reversed – which in fairness they are already beginning to be – if we are to educate the next generation better. The figures bear him out. But the core of his argument is not about numbers of GCSE or A-level candidates. It's about the kind of history we teach and learn....
In its place, Ferguson advocates compulsory GCSE history, fewer but more exacting exams, and longer narratives. His own proposal is for the history curriculum to focus on an overarching study of what he calls the period of western ascendancy stretching from around 1500 to the present. The advantages of this big theme, he claims, are that it offers a large narrative, necessitates a comparative approach, and forces students to think about whether the era of western ascendancy is now coming to an end.
You may or may not agree with Ferguson's ideas. Michael Gove showed some interest in them at Hay. There are other proposals in play as well, many of them familiar to anyone who followed this debate when it first kicked off under Kenneth Baker a generation ago. A few are driven by reactionary nostalgia. But the majority are thoughtful. Ferguson's certainly are....
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
...[W]arnings surely apply to a labelling in the Guardian this week of Professor Niall Ferguson as a rightwing historian. Ferguson may or may not be usefully described as rightwing. "Irritating" is his own word for that. But he is certainly a historian – author of some formidable books with an occasional weakness for arresting overstatement. Calling him a rightwing historian, though, seems about as relevant as describing Cézanne as an anti-Dreyfusard painter....
This would be a serious mistake, because a lot – not all – of what Ferguson says on this subject is less rightwing than right. There is a lot of similarity between what he said this week and what the late Raphael Samuel, whom one would label a leftwing historian, wrote on the same subject about 20 years ago. Ferguson's argument, set out this week at the Guardian Hay Festival, is that history has been banalised and marginalised in the school curriculum and that both trends need to be reversed – which in fairness they are already beginning to be – if we are to educate the next generation better. The figures bear him out. But the core of his argument is not about numbers of GCSE or A-level candidates. It's about the kind of history we teach and learn....
In its place, Ferguson advocates compulsory GCSE history, fewer but more exacting exams, and longer narratives. His own proposal is for the history curriculum to focus on an overarching study of what he calls the period of western ascendancy stretching from around 1500 to the present. The advantages of this big theme, he claims, are that it offers a large narrative, necessitates a comparative approach, and forces students to think about whether the era of western ascendancy is now coming to an end.
You may or may not agree with Ferguson's ideas. Michael Gove showed some interest in them at Hay. There are other proposals in play as well, many of them familiar to anyone who followed this debate when it first kicked off under Kenneth Baker a generation ago. A few are driven by reactionary nostalgia. But the majority are thoughtful. Ferguson's certainly are....