John Tosh: Why history matters
[Mr. Tosh is the author of: Why History Matters (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). John He is Professor of History at Roehampton University, London. He is the author of The Pursuit of History, a standard introduction to the discipline (4th edn, Longman, 2006). His advocacy of the social relevance of history is reflected not only in Why History Matters, but in his specialist research on the history of masculinities in modern Britain, notably in A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (paperback edn, Yale University Press, 2007). J.Tosh@roehampton.ac.uk ]
... My own practice as a historian has always been informed by an awareness of the social and political purchase of historical knowledge - first as an Africanist naively aspiring to equip a new nation with part of its history, and later as a British gender historian concerned to historicize the essentialist notions of masculinity which were current in the 1980s. But the writing of this book was prompted by more recent experience.
For me the Iraq War was a wake-up call. Here was a crisis which manifestly had its roots in the past. Yet during the long lead-up to the invasion in 2003, there was almost no attempt to uncover that past in the media. Instead the British public were repeatedly told that Saddam Hussein was another Hitler - in spite of the fact that analogies which leap over both time and space are the least illuminating. Little was said about the earlier British occupation of Iraq in 1914 and the ensuing attempt to rule the country through a puppet ruler (as pointed out by Beverley Milton-Edwards). There was constant unrest in the country - met by the deployment of RAF bombers as a routine arm of the administration - until the British relinquished overall control in 1934. At the very least such a perspective would have brought sharply into focus the risk of continued insurgency and instability in post-invasion Iraq.
In public government ministers dismissed the merits of historical perspective: Tony Blair told the US Congress in July 2003, 'There has never been a time.... when, except in the most general sense, a study of history provides so little instruction for our present day'. What we have been told of Cabinet deliberations suggests an engagement with history which was only a little less superficial. Perhaps the most depressing aspect of this episode is that there was so little appetite for historical enlightenment among the public. It was as if the bearing of historical perspective on issues of urgent concern was lost on the British people, indicating a political culture in which there was less readiness than ever to draw intelligently on the past.
back to top
History and citizenship
This sombre instance of what Christopher Andrew has called the Historical Attention Span Deficit Disorder sheds some light on the second strand of recent experience which has contributed to this book: the ongoing debate about citizenship education, and the place of history in it. History's role is widely assumed to be to make political identities more than an abstraction - to give human content to 'Britishness' and the values which are held to define it. In fact this has been the dominant interpretation of citizenship since state education was launched in the 1870s. Nation, empire and social deference were the guiding principles of history teaching in Victorian and Edwardian schools (see History and national identity: why they should remain divorced by Stefan Berger). Social cohesion is now defined much more broadly to encompass multicultural identities as well as respect for one's country, and the class politics which once infused the curriculum is much less in evidence today. But recent statements by the Department for Education and Skills and its advisors point to a remarkable continuity of purpose (see the Ajegbo report of 2006, Diversity and Citizenship). History is still expected to produce better citizens by acquainting them with the 'right' past.
But is that what education for citizenship should be about? The problem with the nation-building agenda is that making political demands on the history curriculum is open to endless proliferation. It must now accommodate those multicultural identities which are rightly viewed as part of being British; it must also strike a balance between the national and the global; and schools would be failing in their social duty if the history curriculum did not also devote time to the Holocaust and the slave trade. There are sound arguments for each of these. But the end result is a history curriculum without coherence. Historians routinely condemn the 'sushi bar' of history (though the metaphor is inappropriate if it implies consumer choice). Instead of emerging from school with a sense of history as an extended progression, students learn to 'think in bubbles' (as David Reynolds has put it)....
Read entire article at http://www.historyandpolicy.org
... My own practice as a historian has always been informed by an awareness of the social and political purchase of historical knowledge - first as an Africanist naively aspiring to equip a new nation with part of its history, and later as a British gender historian concerned to historicize the essentialist notions of masculinity which were current in the 1980s. But the writing of this book was prompted by more recent experience.
For me the Iraq War was a wake-up call. Here was a crisis which manifestly had its roots in the past. Yet during the long lead-up to the invasion in 2003, there was almost no attempt to uncover that past in the media. Instead the British public were repeatedly told that Saddam Hussein was another Hitler - in spite of the fact that analogies which leap over both time and space are the least illuminating. Little was said about the earlier British occupation of Iraq in 1914 and the ensuing attempt to rule the country through a puppet ruler (as pointed out by Beverley Milton-Edwards). There was constant unrest in the country - met by the deployment of RAF bombers as a routine arm of the administration - until the British relinquished overall control in 1934. At the very least such a perspective would have brought sharply into focus the risk of continued insurgency and instability in post-invasion Iraq.
In public government ministers dismissed the merits of historical perspective: Tony Blair told the US Congress in July 2003, 'There has never been a time.... when, except in the most general sense, a study of history provides so little instruction for our present day'. What we have been told of Cabinet deliberations suggests an engagement with history which was only a little less superficial. Perhaps the most depressing aspect of this episode is that there was so little appetite for historical enlightenment among the public. It was as if the bearing of historical perspective on issues of urgent concern was lost on the British people, indicating a political culture in which there was less readiness than ever to draw intelligently on the past.
back to top
History and citizenship
This sombre instance of what Christopher Andrew has called the Historical Attention Span Deficit Disorder sheds some light on the second strand of recent experience which has contributed to this book: the ongoing debate about citizenship education, and the place of history in it. History's role is widely assumed to be to make political identities more than an abstraction - to give human content to 'Britishness' and the values which are held to define it. In fact this has been the dominant interpretation of citizenship since state education was launched in the 1870s. Nation, empire and social deference were the guiding principles of history teaching in Victorian and Edwardian schools (see History and national identity: why they should remain divorced by Stefan Berger). Social cohesion is now defined much more broadly to encompass multicultural identities as well as respect for one's country, and the class politics which once infused the curriculum is much less in evidence today. But recent statements by the Department for Education and Skills and its advisors point to a remarkable continuity of purpose (see the Ajegbo report of 2006, Diversity and Citizenship). History is still expected to produce better citizens by acquainting them with the 'right' past.
But is that what education for citizenship should be about? The problem with the nation-building agenda is that making political demands on the history curriculum is open to endless proliferation. It must now accommodate those multicultural identities which are rightly viewed as part of being British; it must also strike a balance between the national and the global; and schools would be failing in their social duty if the history curriculum did not also devote time to the Holocaust and the slave trade. There are sound arguments for each of these. But the end result is a history curriculum without coherence. Historians routinely condemn the 'sushi bar' of history (though the metaphor is inappropriate if it implies consumer choice). Instead of emerging from school with a sense of history as an extended progression, students learn to 'think in bubbles' (as David Reynolds has put it)....