[Dave Musgrove]

There's a debate brewing in the pages of October's BBC History Magazine, about the way children should be taught history. Terry Deary, the man behind the bestselling Horrible Histories series, argues in an opinion piece in the magazine, that children should not pumped full of facts at school. In the same issue, in an interview in advance of the next part of his History of Modern Britain TV series, Andrew Marr suggests that children aren't getting the chronological framework of the past to help them understand Britain's history. Not polar opposites view, but certainly different ideas on the sort of history children should be taught. What do you think?

[Hilary Yewdale]

Terry Deary exaggerates the case - pupils in school today are not pumped full of facts in history lessons - for example they learn to look at source materials and study war poets to understand the feelings of men in the WW1 trenches. At the same time it is necessary to know some facts to help understanding and analysis of the past. Many "facts" may it is true turn out not to be facts but this is something pupils come to understand through learning to look at sources critically. This is a big improvement in the modern teaching of History. When I was at school we were told the facts and never looked at whether the source was indeed reliable.

[Rosalind]

When I was a Primary school in the 1960s we were lucky enough to have a teacher who made the Romans very interesting.

I think that I why I love History so much, as when I went to High School in the early 1970s the first two years of History was spent being taught by at teacher whose idea of teaching us the subject was to write on the blackboards from a text book, missing out the relevant words, which we had to copy and then look up these missing words from the same text book!!!

There was no standing in front of the class discussing History. I always said I could recognise my History teacher from the back but never from the front!

Then at the end of the second year, she retired and was replaced by a really young newly qualified teacher who wasn't really all that much older than us and she brought the subject to life.

It was then I was completely hooked on the subject. IBeing taught about the Tudors I have loved British history every since, and was sorely disappointed when I went into the O-level GCE group and we had to do Modern World. I wanted to go into the CSE group and learn about British Social history!

I have always said teaching is a gift. Not everyone can do it.

[ravenna]

I've ranted before about this in another post but I'll happily do so again. There is both good and bad history teaching now as in the past. The main difference is the value placed on the subject by educational leaders.
Pre- national curriculum some fantastic primary-school and lower secondary school practice existed alongside pockets of indifferent teaching. Today there are similar examples of excellent practice at Key stages 1 - 3 but they are not deemed to contribute to a system driven by formal achievement and assessment, and so a formally disregarded. Until last year in lower secondary schools the pressure to succeed in core subject SATs squeezed all else to the side, and this has been the scenario since 1995. Consequently secondary school history departments are universally sidelined, with an overloaded formal curriculum leading to many schools only teaching history and geography on a carousel timeable and with an hour a week or less by year 9.
In primary schools, SATs still rule and again curricular overcrowding has pushed history along with geography to the sidelines. Most local education authorities do ot have specialist advisers for these subjects and without that level of championing, achieving an intelligent, well-liked and well-balanced scheme of work becomes impossible.
Personally I believe that a sense of chronological structure, a sense of events as narrative, and exposure to the nature of evidence and bias are all equally important to an understanding of history. But to nurture a love of the subject in schools demands talented and well-supported teachers, and the overall support for individual training and development is lacking. Young ambitious teachers who specialise in history will not under the present regime be able to progress far, as primary schools continue to be measured by targets based on literacy, numeracy and science. History teachers at KS -4 will have to do other aspects of the secondary school job to get to the levels enjoyed in the 1970's by your average secondary head of history, and will consequently be pulled away from the teaching of their chosen subject.

[iandevlin]

Am afraid that I am unable to add anything to this at the moment having been brought up through the Irish education system it would seem somehow irrelevant.

But I am learning a fair amount from the other posters here

[Dave Musgrove]

For me, my personal experience having left school was that I had aching gaps in my understanding of the long chronology of British history. It definitely felt like there had been areas of focus that we really went to town on, so I could happily talk about medieval history and the Second World War, but other periods of history, the Georgian period for example, that were comprehensively ignored. I'm definitely with Andrew Marr therefore on the need for the framework on which to hang the detailed period-specific study.

[arley]

If you want kids to get interested in history than you have to make it fun. I remember my history lessons at secondary school being fun thanks to the school organising some really good trips to Derbyshire to Eyam and learning about the plauge cemetary and going down I think a lead mine. Then another one to Shropshire to Iron Bridge and the museum. Admittedly they got a tad boring in the 4th and 5th year when we done WW1 and WW2 because it was just sitting in a classroom having facts bombarded at you by my history teacher. learning about history should be fun and not a chore. My 9 yr old recived a headteachers award last week for her work on the tudors thanks to Terry Deary's Terrible Tudors and Even More Terrible Tudors because she apparently knew more about the period than her teacher (to which I was like OMG this women is teaching my daughter and she doesnt know her stuff) because he made reading about it fun and she wanted to know more hence a trip to Hampton Court and the Tower of London! I agree the facts need to be known b but it also needs to be fun and engaging and having a great history teacher who knows their stuff and can make the subject fun and wherever possible taken outside the classroom. My daughter is now saying she wants to be an archeologist. So to my history teachers I thankyou all for making history fun and for encouraging me to carry on studying the subject and to Mr Deary for grabbing my daughters interest and for making history fun!

[katnoodle]

This is such a valid debate, and one I hope the education policy-makers will be listening to (don't get me started on them).

I'll be starting a PGCE in secondary history next year, and I'm both excited and worried about my future career. I absolutely agree that to be an effective history teacher you have to engage and enthuse your students about the past. I'm lucky to have a resilient passion for history, but I've had my share of poor teachers who managed to make the Russian Revolution dull. Obviously the first thing a good history teacher needs is an infectious love of the subject, but I believe a good sense of humour about the past, not treating it too heavily. It should also be made relevant to the pupils - if it doesn't have an obvious link to the present day, encouraging a keen sense of empathy is both useful and important. I really hope I turn out to be one of those inspirational and memorable teachers.

But as others have said here, even dedication to the best teaching of your subject is little use if the education system doesn't see the value of learning history. It will always take second place to the core subjects, but it seems to be increasingly seem as a luxury subject - one that would be nice to study if only there was room on the timetable. I hope it will enjoy a kind of renaissance, recognised as being essential for providing young people with a solid understanding of what shaped the world around them. An encouraging number of students continue to choose history at GCSE and A Level - if this is to continue and improve, the onus is on the exam boards to provide a stimulating syllabus. I opted not to take GCSE at GCSE purely because the programme looked so dull.

I agreed with the arguments of both Andrew Marr and Terry Deary - while hardly diametrically opposed, they both made very valid points. It may not be the most fun aspect of the subject, but a sense of chronology is absolutely vital. Quite rightly, students today are being taught how to form a good argument, how to evaluate sources, how to recognise bias, etc. But history is essentially a long, intricate story - if it's taught in a disjointed manner it will never make sense.

[charlatan]

Terry Deary is misguided on this issue. The pupils of today are not simply pumped full of facts. I recall Guy de la Beyodere, in one of his articles mentioning how his pupils were 'drowning in learning skills' but were strangely short on actual basic knowledge. The pupils of today are given sources to study and evaluate and not just at GCSE level. For example has he even bothered to take a look at the Good King/Bad King John textbook for use with Year 7? I doubt it.
Having said that it is surely important to give pupils a framework of facts and knowledge on which to build their opinions and ideas. Therefore it is essential that some sort of choronology is taught as Andrew Marr believes. Sadly, if you examine the National Curriculum key concepts for history the phrase 'chronological understanding' is not mentioned after level 5 suggesting it is of lesser importance. There is no requirement to teach this concept at this point which could be Year 7 for many pupils.

Terry Deary's article seems an excuse for him to get across his own left/liberal viewpoint and point the finger at the usual suspects that offend him. Therefore he complains about the Daily Mail, Mrs Thatcher, the Tories and 'extreme right-wingers'. (It is possible to be right-wing and NOT extreme but presumably not to Terry Deary). His assertion that 'If the Tories win the next election this dinosaur will be back to re-impose his crushing footprint on the schooling system' is just untrue. Who is this dinosaur that he will not name? Surely it cannot be the same Tory minister who presided over the establishment of the NC in the later 1980s? Or is Terry Deary again allowing his prejudices to appear by suggesting that the Conservative party is 'the dinosaur'?

The stated aim of the article was 'an outspoken attack on those who believe that the aim of history teaching should be to pump pupils full of facts' but hardly anyone actually thinks that and it certainly does not occur in schools today. If Terry Deary thinks the Tories will attempt to re-impose this method then that merely reveals his ignorance of the modern Conservative party. He is complaining about something that does not really exist.

[ravenna]

Charlatan is in denial. There is a clear relationship between party political objectives and the state school curriculum, whcih began in the 1980s with the arrival of the NC. Then, the Thatcher government went out of its way to be seen to get heavy with state-funded schools. Some of us will remember only too clearly the first Ofsted Inspections, which were characterised by deliberate aggression towards the schools they visited.
Despite Bambi Blair's protestations we have experienced 12 years of conservatism by stealth, short-termism and sound-bite policy.
And lastly, if history teaching in schools is so good, why are so few students nationally choosing it at exam level?