“We cannot be surprised that some within the next generation do not value our parliamentary democracy if they know nothing of the English Civil War, do not vote if they are not taught about the struggles to widen the franchise, and do not value any authority figures, if they are not told the inspiring tales of the national heroes of the past.”
So, Tim Collins, Shadow Home Secretary for Education, is reported as yesterday having declared at a conference of Catholic Head Teachers. He went on to make a new Tory pledge that, if elected, they will extend the compulsory study of history at school beyond the age of 14 when it can currently be dropped to 16.
The remedy Mr Collins prescribes for the malady he claims to detect in today’s young seems remarkably ill suited to cure it.
The malady from which Mr Collins claims today’s youngsters too often suffer is political apathy and cynicism, combined with or deriving from insufficient appreciation of the merits of British parliamentary democracy. His prescribed remedy is two further years of compulsory history at school.
If Tim Collins thinks two further years of what passes for history in today’s schools is going to reverse growing political apathy and cynicism among today’s young, it is not they but he who is in need of a course in British history.
No people better appreciated or cherished their political institutions and way of life more than did the British in 1939 and 1940. Yet, at that time, British children did not have to attend school beyond the age of 14, and only relatively few did.
Until the Fisher Education Act of 1918 raised the school-leaving age to 14, most children in England finished their schooling at the age of 12. Their relatively few years of formal schooling did not prevent working-class English men, women, and children in 1897 flocking the streets of London to watch and cheer as Queen Victoria led a procession of troops to Elephant and Castle to mark her Diamond Jubilee.
One could continue further back in time to show that the strength of patriotism and national pride of a people is not a function of how many years history schooling the have received. Nor, given how many highly educated Englishmen and women in the twenties and thirties succumbed to the charms of communism and thereby felt themselves willing to hand over their country to the Soviets, does intensive study of British history guarantee immunity from deep indifference, if not active hostility to, British parliamentary democracy.
When it comes to the political education that history can provide, what matters is not exactly what events are known or how many of them, but how the events that are known are interpreted. Here, it is the political sensibilities of history teachers who provide the crucial filters through which schoolchildren are first made to look on and make sense of such facts of history as they are taught.
To breed political apathy and cynicism among school leavers, it is not necessary history teachers should themselves share these attitudes, though doubtless that can help. Often, these attitudes can be far more readily inculcated in youngsters through being taught by those filled with a fervent hatred of the established way of political life.
Today’s politically apathetic and disengaged youngsters do not result from their having been left ignorant of British history. They are apathetic and disengaged because they have been fed a diet of pernicious half-truths and calumnies about their country by teachers in all liberal arts subjects, not just in history, who for generations now have, for the most part, shared a deep left-wing hostility to British political culture.
No one saw all this more clearly than George Orwell who, in 1945, observed that among the intelligentsia in England ‘a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory’.
What Orwell said about this group then holds even more truly of them today. It makes the problem of how to stem growing political apathy among the young more subtle and complex a problem than Mr Collins gives the impression of supposing.
Perhaps, to inculcate greater patriotism and political interest among young Britons today what they need is less rather than more schooling, especially in British history as it is all too often taught today!
Certainly, the Tories are rightly concerned about current lack of patriotism among many of today’s young. As in so many other areas of public policy, however, having correctly identified a problem, their proposed solutions to it tend to be insufficiently radical.
Classical liberals are ideally placed to help today’s Tories, and New Labour for that matter if they would but listen, think outside the box, in not having any direct parliamentary aspirations of their own.
Lord knows, the country sorely needs some radical thinking on how best to preserve and safeguard its glorious liberal culture and political traditions from the numerous threats that beset it today!
Comments (1)
History! Oh, dearie me what a vast subject! I've seen it destroyed during my teaching career, not by leftist historians but by the imposition of the comprehensive school. That made a "comprehensive" view of the past impossible. Then the politicians made the "thing of shreds and patches" compulsory: then they decided to do away with that: now they want to bring back compulsion!
If only these clowns would leave things alone. There is much interest in history among the young and their teachers: this could be left to bear fruit on its own, in a private system - I am a private tutor - without official interference. The politicians have only got worried because they fear that no-one will turn out to vote for them (unsurprisingly). But history with some wretched moral tagged to it is not history and the young readily smell a rat.
As Diogenes said when Alexander the Great asked if he could do a favour: just get out of the light!
Posted by nigel probert | February 2, 2005 9:23 PM
Posted on February 2, 2005 21:23