Civitas

It may be too little in that their attempt at educational reform will not succeed in its objective unless the government really appreciates just how much needs to be changed in terms of what is taught, in schools and in Muslim schools and colleges in particular, to ensure that all British citizens growing up here do so with sufficient knowledge of this country and its history to give them the wherewithal to appreciate just what a free and tolerant society it is and has been comparatively speaking for a very long time, and hence what a privilege they and their families have, in many cases, in having been granted citizenship here, and how much the world owes generally to British achievement.

It may be too late in that the rot has now gone so deep and become so pervasive it may be too late to restore the traditions and political culture needed to sustain a religiously and ethnically plural society such as ours that is at the same time both tolerant, mutually respectful and above all united in a common national identity with which not only are they all at ease but which they rejoice in having.

Basically, the Crick agenda of active citizenship needs replacing by the older model that sought only good and politically literate and well-informed citizen and that had long fallen into desuetude under pressure from multiculturalism before the Crick one came along to fill the vacuum. The older model of citizenship education demands only political literacy from pupils, so to be able to exercise the vote responsibly, not the manic activism that lies at the heart of Crick’s ideal. The older model also requires something with which Crick’s model is ultimately incompatible: namely, sufficient understanding and appreciation of the institutions of this country and of the history by which it came to acquire them as would almost certainly foster love of country and allegiance to it in all those who had undergone such a form of schooling.

The best way , or at least one very good way, to restore the kind and style of history teaching that would achieve what the government is seeking to bring back to the class-room would be for Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall’s Our Island Story , along with other works of a similar kind, to become part of the core of what is taught in history in primary schools, if not to become the back-bone of the history curriculum in primary school and during the early years of secondary school.

The naïve and innocent phase of the present government’s time in office was symbolised by the exhibition in the Millennium Dome to celebrate that occasion which managed to expunge all reference to British historical achievements for the supposed sake of greater inclusiveness.

It is a sign of its belated coming of age that it has begun to recognise the importance of conveying to British school-children and university students some understanding of Britain’s historical achievements and of how it came to lead the world in the development of liberal and tolerant institutions so that they begin to make that island’s story their own, rather than writing a new chapter for it in which all its great historical achievement is destroyed through deconstruction, of both the intellectual and of the more incendiary kind.