Examination of Witnesses (Questions 400-419)
PROFESSOR LINDA
COLLEY, PROFESSOR
DAVID CONWAY
AND DR
DINA KIWAN
7 JUNE 2006
Q400 Chairman: No. I thought you
said because there are rules and regulations and laws that are
coming from outside the United Kingdom?
Professor Conway: If you read
the papers, like you say the electorate reads, I think that is
a message that has come down from the floor of the Commons.
Q401 Chairman: I was merely trying
to draw out from you, and all of you, you are all academics, and
Dr Kiwan said very clearly that she had done research on this
subject and she commented on that, but then she put on her other
hat and said "My view is [. . .]" and I wondered if
you could do the same?
Professor Conway: I will give
you some evidence-based research, as follows. This country has
always had citizenship education; it has had it for as long as
there has been a country. Originally it was given by the church,
which was the sole purveyor of schooling in this country for a
very, very long time. After the 1688 Revolution, when the country
was bitterly divided, or it had been, and an unsuccessful attempt
had been made to re-Catholicise it, one of the first things John
Locke did, and it was right at the end of his life, was publish
Some Thoughts Concerning Education. He spoke of the vital
importance of social cohesion and the vital importance of the
role that the teaching of history, British history, had to play
in the social construction of a national identity, which he asserts,
in that work, it is paramount that the politically-active classes
have. It was incorporated in the form of schooling which British
elites had, which were the active citizens of those days, and
when the working-class men were given the vote in 1867 by someone
whose family was of comparatively-recent ethnic stock, Benjamin
Disraeli, after the 1870 Education Act, in 1883, the teaching
of history, British narrative history, came in not through textbooks
and not through almanacs but through readers; it was done, as
it were, through reading, learning literacy. It shows how you
can teach citizenship under the guise of doing something else.
Just as I would claim, because history was taught in the process
of the children learning to read, that the form of history these
readers did purvey—which I am sure professors of history
know far better than I—was a standard interpretation of
British history as in the vanguard of moral and ethical and political
progress. Of course it was done slowly and gradually and there
were set-backs on the way, but this view was called by Butterfield
the "Whig interpretation", and later he withdrew that
epithet because he said it is the "Englishman's interpretation"
of history, as he did in his book in 1944, where he took back
the suggestion that this interpretation of British exceptionalism
was something which was purveyed only by the Whigs. If you read
William Blackstone's commentaries on the laws of this country,
you will see that, as a Tory, he subscribed to it too. As the
first Professor of Jurisprudence in Oxford, he concluded his lecture
series on English law with a narrative account of the way in which
our institutions and laws had risen to make this country the paragon
in its day of freedom and liberty. Therefore, the long and the
short of it is citizenship, good, you do not need to marginalise
it and separate it off from the rest of the curriculum, you have
ways and means, and it should be being purveyed from the earliest
days. If you take Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall's Kings and
Things, this was a book intended for nursery school children.
Chairman: Just to stop you there; that
was very useful.
Q402 Helen Jones: Can we try perhaps
to tease out some of the facts that we are dealing with, first
of all. There seems to be an almost universal assumption underlying
much of this discussion that society is in fact coming apart at
the edges, we have got civil disorder, lack of respect, and so
on, and that is taken as read before we move on to any specialist
citizenship education. Professor Colley, as a historian, is that
accurate, in your view, is it any different from what it has been
at various other points in our history?
Professor Colley: Academics never
give you a straight answer. I do not subscribe to it is falling
apart, massive immorality, no respect, I do not belong to that
school, but, I would stress, I do not think this is just our challenge,
our problem, I think all sorts of polities in the world are confronted
with comparable challenges at this time. I do think the rate of
change in this country since the Second World War has been enormous.
There has been the loss of the Empire and the acceptance that
we are no longer in the sort of first world power stakes. There
has been a lot more immigration into these islands from very,
very diverse sources. Before the Second World War, most people
in the island of Great Britain were mostly Protestant; that has
changed completely. There have been radical changes in the position
of women, far more women are going out to work, changes in the
nature of the family; there is the relationship with continental
Europe. All sorts of differences; and we live in, to use a buzz
word, a period of globalisation, where we are being bombarded
with images and influences from all around the world. I do not
think it is we are falling apart therefore we need to think about
these issues, but I do think that because we are living in a period
of rapid change, which is only going to get more so, we need to
catch up. Before the Second World War there was lots more deference;
there was, as we have been told, much more emphasis on a kind
of standardised history curriculum. We may not think that is the
way to go at the beginning of the 21st century, but I do think
some creative and constructive thought has to be devoted to these
issues, not in a panicky way and not in the expectation that this
will be a panacea for everything, it will not be, but we do need
to oil the machine to make it work better.
Helen Jones: If we are going to do that
and we are going to do it through citizenship education, through
history, and so on, let me come back to this question which seems
to me to be fundamental to that, can we reach an agreed narrative
of social and cultural history which encompasses what we might
define as British values; is that possible? If so, what should
it be; can it be the same narrative? I do not agree with Professor
Conway that narrative history disappeared in the sixties. Certainly
it was the history that I was taught at school; whether it is
entirely accurate, whether it is suitable for the 21st century,
is another matter entirely. From your different perspectives on
this, do you think it is possible to do that, to reach that kind
of agreed narrative, and, if so, what is it going to consist of?
Q403 Chairman: Let us switch to Dina
Kiwan first; would you like to answer that, Dr Kiwan?
Dr Kiwan: Can we reach an agreed-upon,
shared narrative of history I think is similar to saying can we
reach a set of agreed, shared values. I think, if it is abstract
enough, one can, but then there is a question of how one operationalises
that, in practice. I think it was said in the last session that
a narrative does not have to mean that it is homogenised. I think,
if it is structured conceptually and one debates certain strands
and there is a set of sub-narratives around certain conceptual
strands, perhaps that is one way forward, but I am not an expert
in history.
Professor Conway: I would simply
reply, to the question whether we can reach an agreed narrative
history, asking why should that be more of a problem now than
it was for the centuries when there was such a one that was agreed,
essentially. Notwithstanding all the changes that have been itemised,
by way of globalisation, immigration, breakdown of the family,
women's rights, and all the rest of it, I just cannot see why
there cannot be a common, British, agreed narrative history. I
look forward to having it explained to me what areas there are
in such an elementary children's narrative history as the one
I mentioned before, Kings and Things, which was intended
for nursery school children, which has a wonderful narrative from
when the Romans invaded these shores.
Helen Jones: What was intended for nursery
school children is not necessarily what we would want to teach
throughout our school system. Professor Colley, has there ever
been such an agreed narrative of history, and, if so, can we come
up with one for the future? One of my colleagues has just muttered,
for instance, "Is there an agreed narrative about the miners'
strike?"
Q404 Chairman: Obviously, there is
not one on our relationship with you on this?
Professor Conway: That was why
I think it was wise, until very recently, for history to end,
before it starts to become overly contentious.
Mr Marsden: Where do you want to take
us back to?
Q405 Chairman: You did ask a specific
question of Professor Colley; less levity on this side. Professor
Colley?
Professor Colley: I do not think
that you could get that kind of totalising, consensual version
of history for the whole of history, not least, of course, because
we are dealing with devolution now: Wales, Scotland, constant
change in Northern Ireland. There are going to be differences
of emphasis in different parts of the geography of the UK, but
that does not mean that there cannot be within the differences
of emphasis some kind of uniform core. I would like to see, for
example, and it would be a way of amalgamating citizenship and
history lessons, you could have a course that all students had
to do on the struggle for citizenship in these islands. You could
start, if you like, in 1603, when the thrones of Scotland and
England were joined; that would get you into the 1640s so that,
for example, schoolchildren would learn that in 1649 10,000 women
were petitioning for the vote: 1649. Most people do not know that.
You would then go on to 1689, you could get then the struggles
only Wilkes and liberty in the 1760s, the right to print the House
of Commons' debates, you would get the abolition of the slave
trade, the Reform Acts of the 19th century, the enfranchisement
of women. There could be a set of canonical dates, and I think
that is very important. I work in the United States, which has
a far more diverse population, and of course it is a vast terrain,
it is 3,000 miles wide. They cannot have a uniform history but
what they do have is, and they get over in their schools to people
with very different backgrounds, with very different political
baggage, certain dates, certain sort of canonical big events,
so that people come out of school, okay, they diverge in all sorts
of ways but they know the meaning of 1776, or they think they
do, they know the meaning of the American Civil War, they know
why the United States fought in the Second World War. I think
you can do that kind of core tuition. I am not optimistic about
getting a fully consensual, comprehensive narrative, because,
as I say, we are in a post-devolution world.
Q406 Mr Carswell: I have got three
questions, and I hope our other two witnesses will forgive me,
I want to direct to Professor Conway, because I find some of what
you have said so far very refreshing, given some of the evidence
in previous sessions that we have heard. My first question is
why should the state promote citizenship in the first place? We
have tended to assume in this inquiry that it should. Surely,
in this country, we have a far more organic, bottom-up sense of
identity, unlike European countries where the state has had to
impose its sense of identity. The state has not put St George
crosses on my car, I put them there myself. We have got these
common cultural reference points which have evolved amongst us,
as citizens, not imposed on us by the state; so why should the
state have citizenship classes, in the first place?
Professor Conway: If I might answer
that question by saying that in the days before there was a kind
of formal, state-driven citizenship education curriculum, like
the one you are asking me why we should have, it was mandatory
that anyone in this country who took any formal role at all in
public life, including the village constable, which, by the way,
like jury service, was a mandatory obligation, and hence one finds
in Shakespeare's plays some of the kind of ridicule of that role
in which people found themselves, it was mandatory for anyone,
upon assuming any form of public role, to take an oath of allegiance.
The oath of allegiance was such that it excluded for a long time
Catholics; of course, atheism was a capital offence and people
were killed for espousing atheism. Therefore, to answer your question,
there were other ways and means of ensuring such a degree of social
cohesion among the political nation as to preclude the need for
attention to the kind of common values and common identity that
are needed for a robust, viable nation state. Having become as
plural as we are and scrapping the need for such a restrictive
and exclusive form of identity then the state does have both a
right and a duty to ensure that each generation of its citizens
has the requisite forms of allegiances, and hence it has a legitimate
role.
Q407 Chairman: You are being far
too polite. The fact of the matter is the things you have been
saying this morning do not agree with Douglas at all, because
the history that you have described is top-down, is it not, what
you have described, that if you did not conform you would end
up on the gallows?
Professor Conway: No, I did not
say that at all; what I said was, anyone who was part of the politically-active
classes, that excluded vast swathes, the majority of people.
Q408 Chairman: Earlier you took us
through a whole history, often from top down, values were taught
through the church, not through other social institutions, and
it was top-down. Douglas said to you but is it not the fact that
we are much better because our values come bottom-up, unlike our
European neighbours'? I want to know, did you agree with him or
disagree with him?
Professor Conway: The state has
a right and a duty to expect that all future citizens of it have
the wherewithal to be competent and useful and law-abiding citizens.
Insofar as there is need for literacy, in order for eligibility
to vote, the state can specify the need that every future citizen
or any child born into this country should be taught various forms
of skills.
Chairman: So I am a top-down man and
you are a bottom-up man. Second question?[10]
Q409 Mr Carswell: The second question.
Is there not something slightly ironic, and this is a slightly
partisan question, that the left has spent a long time trying
to unpick the glue that holds us together; now that they are the
establishment they are trying to find a new glue to hold us together?
Is there not something slightly ironic about that?
Professor Conway: It is not ironic,
it is tragic, but I suppose it is better late than never.
Q410 Mr Carswell: My final question.
If you scratch beneath the surface of what the quangos say it
means by Britishness, when it talks about citizenship, it comes
out with values and talks about a sort of pastiche of words, like
tolerance. However desirable these things are, I do not see how
they can be distinctly British. Is not citizenship, as defined
by the quango state, and the whole citizenship agenda, merely
a way of enforcing top-down social engineering on us?
Professor Conway: It would be,
and that is why, in place of that kind of abstract form of instruction,
what I am making the plea for is the reinstatement of traditional
British narrative history. H.E. Marshall wrote many books more
than the nursery history book. She wrote a history of England,
she wrote a history of Scotland, she wrote a history of America,
she wrote a history of the Empire, and she wrote for various different
levels. I am not suggesting she monopolised the history curriculum
but I am suggesting she was but one of a whole plethora of historians,
and any self-respecting historian who knew their trade and who
knew the tradition would know exactly what I have in mind.
Q411 Mr Carswell: Do you have any
comments to add to that, about the citizenship agenda being merely
a means of social engineering?
Professor Colley: There are various
partisan waves that I cannot really speak to. What I think I would
say is that I share what I surmise is your scepticism about some
of the emphasis on Britishness as values. I just do not find it
gets us very far. The British are gentle, tolerant people; well,
it depends on your point of view, and it does not get us very
far. Also my feeling is that Britishness is rather like happiness,
it is an end product, it is something that you get from doing
other things; there is more serious political work that needs
to be done. Britishness from the beginning was something that
was superimposed on much older identities—Englishness, Welshness,
and Scottishness—and it was superimposed mainly for religious
and political and warlike reasons, and geographical reasons, of
course. I do not think there is a kind of pure essence of Britishness
that we can go and find that will resolve our problems. I do not
think it is like that.
Q412 Paul Holmes: One thing that
I do agree with that I have heard from Professor Conway is the
idea that rather than try to reinvent the wheel, in the sense
of imposing citizenship as an artificial subject, as a history
teacher for 22 years, I argued constantly that history taught
citizenship anyway and that it is a shame that half the kids in
the country stop studying it at age 14, and that if history continued
through 16 and you ignored the ridiculous detail that is in the
National Curriculum to let teachers get on with the job then you
could be teaching citizenship through history and killing two
birds with one stone. I was rather concerned about some of the
suggestions, first that citizenship might be a form of social
engineering, that we should replace that form of social engineering
with another form of social engineering, because it seemed you
were talking about history teaching as a received truth, of Kings
and Queens, and things, that we should not be teaching children
to question or evaluate that but just simply teaching a received
version of what history and society was all about?
Professor Conway: I think there
really is something to question, as it were, and that would be
the function of history to teach our island story. That provides
enough data for questioning. I am not suggesting that there be
only one rigid, uniform, very narrow and circumscribed variant
of what gets taught; on the contrary, any decent form of history
teaching has constantly built-in questions of contestation. Having
said all that, I do think, nevertheless, that just in the same
way that you can have parliamentary parties which are opposed
to one another but there is much commonality between them, so
likewise within the discipline there can be much contestation
at the margins, there can even be fundamental revisions from time
to time but within the context of a discipline about which there
is an established consensus and a growing body of knowledge. Therefore,
I do think that history can and should fulfil a vital nation-building
role. In that sense, if it is not the kind of more artificial
social engineering which imposes a kind of identity which just
does not add up to one, the history we need for our ethnically
plural society, if it is to be a socially cohesive one and one
in which there is mutual civility and respect, it does need for
the identities of each upcoming generation to become uniform,
uniform through a sense of identification with the country to
which they belong. There is only one way of doing that and that
is through familiarising them with its history in such a way as
to engage their affections to the country and its institutions.
It is as simple as that; you either accept it or you do not.
Paul Holmes: That does seem to presuppose
that there is a version of history that we can agree on, that
the Government of the day can agree on, that it can write into
a National Curriculum that it can impose on children. Back in
1989, when the Berlin wall came down, Professor Francis Fukuyama,
who was an advisor to Regan at the time and is still an advisor
to the Republicans now, said that was the end of history; everybody
now agreed in the world that liberal democratic capitalism was
the answer to everything. I can remember teaching my A level students
at the time but what about other issues, like green issues, or
Islam that was rising in large parts of the world, which might
just disagree with that, and of course he has admitted since that
he was totally wrong and that was a naive simplistic view. Could
I ask the other two witnesses, can you really have a simple narrative
of any nation's history that everybody, politicians, government,
historians, can all agree, this is it, this is what we will teach?
Q413 Chairman: We are focusing rather
on the historical narrative, which is not Dr Kiwan's expertise,
but do you want to comment, Dr Kiwan?
Dr Kiwan: What I think has come
out, which I suppose perhaps is implicit in that question, is
it is about teaching people a body of knowledge, that somehow
we can inculcate common values by familiarisation then everyone
will buy into it. I think that what is not addressed in that kind
of logic is the process, how do you get to that point; it is not
just about delivering the knowledge and then everyone says, "Oh,
yes, I've seen the light, I'll buy into that," way of doing
things. One has to get at what motivates people to buy into that,
what motivates people to participate, and I think identity is
the crucial issue in that equation.
Professor Colley: I have already
expressed my scepticism; however desirable it might be in theory,
I am sceptical about being able to put over an entirely uniform,
fully comprehensive British history to everybody. If it is possible
then, fine, I have no objection to it. I think it would be very
difficult. Issues of identity take us beyond the schoolroom and
that is a much bigger question.
Q414 Chairman: What is interesting
about all three of you, but particularly the two historians, if
you do not mind me calling you historians, is choice in the use
about it is not just all these dates that Paul is talking about,
and big events, and so on, which should be part of the national
consciousness, or memory, but should it not be about teaching
people the love of history, whatever way you do it, loving the
analysis of what is there, bringing the subject to life? Is not
that also a very important part of this process? If you sit kids
down with narrow, dull dates and texts, it has always been a turn-off
for history, has it not?
Professor Colley: Of course, the
primary importance, and it is what I live for, is to convince
people that history is the most vivid discipline, how could it
not be, it is about human beings who just happen to be dead. If
you cannot make people excited about history then there is something
wrong with you as a teacher, there is something wrong with what
you are putting over. I am certainly not pushing a purely utilitarian
notion of the subject, nor do I think that history lessons should
be confined to the history of these islands, because we are going
to have to interconnect, increasingly, with different parts of
the world, we always have done in the past. A history of Britain,
a history of these islands, cannot just be insular, cannot just
be nationalistic, it is a story of how we have interlinked with
different parts of the world in the past. To that extent, I think
we have a wonderfully usable past for the world that we inhabit
now, because of the Empire, because of trade, because of exploration
and travel. These tiny islands have had to do with so many parts
of the world and so I would like people to learn from history,
in school and out of school, that our past is a story of connections,
not just of islandhood.
Chairman: I have just read The Many-Headed
Hydra, which I think is a fine example of that.
Q415 Dr Blackman-Woods: I have a
follow-up question to one which was asked earlier and it is to
Professor Conway. I wonder if you have thought about some of the
potential dangers of trying to impose a particular view of Britishness
or history on groups of children, because we have in living memory
examples of this happening, for example, in Northern Ireland where
the Catholic tradition was completely written out of history in
the textbooks in the way in which it was taught in schools, or
it was taught very differently between Catholic and Protestant
schools? That has the effect of alienating people from a sense
of citizenship because of the negation of their identity. It seems
to me that if you down your argument we are in very real danger
of doing that again with a number of different groups in our current
society, which is very diverse. Surely we have learned that the
way forward is about discussing difference and coming to agreement,
rather than imposing a particular view on our young people?
Professor Conway: I am not sure
that we have quite learned that, all of us. I would concur with
you entirely that there is need, given the degree of diversity
there is in this country, that children, no-one, from whatever
background they come, should be made to feel through their education
that the identity of their family and their ancestors, or whatever,
however you want to describe it, is one which they should be ashamed
of, or that they should not be encouraged to learn about, nor
indeed, insofar as they attend schools with children from other
ethnicities and other backgrounds, that those other children should
not be told about. Having said all of that, nonetheless, I would
still reiterate that, insofar as one of the concerns for the revisitation
by this Government of the citizenship curriculum was concerns
about social cohesion, there is a need for a common identity for
all children. I believe that the one which used to be purveyed,
and in particular by means of history, was one which would be
inclusive, tolerant and one to which all children, no matter what
their backgrounds, could buy into, because it is a story which
really they should read out of it, warts and all, yes, bad things
have been done, but, on balance. Why is everyone here? They are
here because this is a country which allows room for religious
toleration, which allows escape from oppression abroad; they know
about this and if they are taught about this in the right way
they have cause for gratitude, cause for affection for this country.
That is the form of common identity and, of course, one must not
disguise the conflicts that have occurred, and any good, decent
form of history teaching should give room for their consideration
and debates about them. No doubt people are going to be left,
at the end of the day, after their process of schooling, as divided
as natural conservatives and socialists are, but nonetheless there
is underneath it some common ground which has to be created if
this country is to survive as an ongoing liberal democracy.
Q416 Dr Blackman-Woods: In a sense,
I think we have been dwelling too much on history and there are
other subjects that have something to say about citizenship. However,
my point was really that I was concerned that you were suggesting
there was a particular view of history when I thought we had actually
moved on to acknowledge that there is contestation. There is no
common view about the Government of Ireland Act, really there
is not, there are different opinions about it, and surely we have
to acknowledge that but also move on to look at other subjects?
Professor Conway: Absolutely.
I agree with that.
Q417 Stephen Williams: The guts of
what I was going to ask have been covered. Do we actually need
a review of the citizenship curriculum, as suggested by Bill Rammell,
to look at British values; is that necessary?
Professor Conway: Yes. Classroom
time is a very scarce commodity and it should not be filled up
with things which have no real value.
Dr Kiwan: Yes. I do think there
should be a review and, as I notified, I am not sure if you are
aware, I am actually going to be involved. I am supporting Keith
Ajegbo in that review.
Q418 Chairman: Do you have a view,
Professor Colley?
Professor Colley: I have been
in the United States and I am afraid I have not followed these
particular different policies, I am sorry.
Q419 Stephen Williams: Is the fact
that we are talking about citizenship and the Government thinks
that citizenship needs to be taught an admission that we do not
understand British values, so, the teaching of other subjects,
such as history, geography, RI, things like that, basically it
is an admission of failure?
Professor Colley: No, I do not
think it is. I think it is a catching up, as I tried to suggest
in previous comments. We can all disagree about how the solution
can be found and what emphasis should be put on it, but I do think
these are overdue issues, they are overdue because of the changes
that I talked about earlier and that others have talked about.
We need to devote some intelligent thought to the situation we
are in. We are in a very different Britain at the beginning of
the 21st century than we were before the Second World War and
we have not really given that much considered thought to what
kind of polity we are, what kind of image we present about ourselves.
One of the differences obviously which has not been mentioned
is the position of the monarchy. We are one of the few substantial
states in the world at the moment which still has a monarchy.
Whatever you think about that, attitudes to the monarchy now are
very different than they were in the 1940s and 1950s; there was
a kind of core deference to the monarchy that existed then which,
rightly or wrongly, does not exist now. We need to think about
other forms of view, other forms of union, and so I think the
discussion about citizenship is overdue and I think it is going
to be ongoing.
Stephen Williams: To have my own go about
this question of the narrative of British history, is it a fair
caricature perhaps of the two positions of either side? Professor
Conway's version of history might be a bit of a Boys' Own
adventure, from Drake through to Nelson, to when a quarter of
the world was coloured red and ending with our finest hour, which
we said should end in 1940, but perhaps Professor Colley's is
more inclusive, about women, poor people, and so on, or have I
got a false impression of the sort of narrative that you think
British children should understand?
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