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The Lord Bishop of Norwich: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Luke, for enabling us to debate this important subject. Christianity is often described as an historical religion, but I am prompted to speak more because I owe a great deal to some fine history teachers at my grammar school 40 years ago. The excitement that they conveyed about the significance of the past as a living reality in the present caused me to read history at university. Their teaching gave me a sense of belonging to this country and of valuing the continuities and the discontinuities between the past and the present. It was the experience of living history that helped me to recognise that Christianity could be both historical and contemporary. That commitment gave me an enlarged sense of common humanity.

I take seriously all that the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, said in his speech, and I am very conscious of how a nurse from a Norfolk vicarage, Edith Cavell—who must have been nurtured in a very patriotic way having nursed prisoners of war—when facing the firing squad in 1915, said: "Patriotism is not enough". And of course it is not.

I want to make one modest suggestion, ask a question and make an observation. The Government seem very keen on encouraging or teaching citizenship, but that often sounds a rather woolly concept to me. I cannot but think that a stronger place in the national curriculum and increased resources for the teaching of history in our schools might produce more informed citizens in the next generation without having to invent some strange new discipline cut loose from the historical moorings that it needs. Does the Minister recognise the strong connection between the place of history in the curriculum, taught well and properly, and a lively sense of citizenship? I suggest that, instead of thrashing around to find out what Britishness is all about, often reduced to a vague belief in tolerance and the importance of queuing, we already have in the teaching of history—its darker side as well as its better side—a vehicle for a better informed future electorate, one that might understand that our legal, religious, social and economic life is grounded in historical development; it is not something that stands still at all.

Teaching values without any sense of where they might have come from is often fruitless, so I would love to see us nourishing our collective memory as a means of consolidating a collective identity, which includes every citizen in this country. Like many bishops, I am a frequent visitor to schools and I have also had children at home who, until relatively recently, were studying history for GCSEs and at A-level. I observe that today's school pupils seem to know a great deal about relatively short historical periods. I have lived in a home where there once appeared to be almost continuous study of the Tudors and Hitler and Stalin, but nothing much in between. That makes the learning of history episodic. Perhaps that is because we are liable to concentrate not on grand movements in history but on the great personalities of the past, which is a sort of reflection back of our celebrity culture today. I suspect that that is why we do it.
 
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I know that the answer, "That's not my period", is given by many historians to any question about 10 years outside their specialism, but am I correct in thinking that specialism now starts very early and that the broader sweep of history is suspect? If the broader sweep of history is suspect, where does that leave us? Does it matter? I think that it might, if learning becomes disconnected.

My observation comes from living next door to Norwich Cathedral, which has a fine education department. Some 13,000 school pupils of different ages and backgrounds and from different contexts came to the cathedral last year, many using the cathedral to complete projects not simply in religious education—which is rather a minority subject in this use of the cathedral—but in science, history and other disciplines as part of their studies. Getting to know this historical building, which is such a vibrant living centre of daily life, worship and other activities, proves immensely appealing. Many children and young people come expecting to be bored and find that they are fascinated. That is because of the imagination of our education officers and what they offer.

But I observe that schools now seem to find it much more demanding to bring pupils for this sort of experience. It is the scale of supervision required and the assessment of the risks involved that make them cautious. I sometimes wonder whether the regulatory frameworks that we have created limit imagination and risk in some areas of our learning. I also observe that sources of funding for the development of this work are much less plentiful from statutory sources than one might think given that our cathedrals and parish churches are the great carriers of living history. We see that as part of our mission in our cathedral, but sometimes we still face suspicions that it is some narrowly proselytising endeavour. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature and character of Christian faith in the context of the history of this country.

Ours is a society so rich in history and historical artefacts that I suspect that we can take history and its teaching for granted and that many people simply think that we absorb it somehow. Again I thank the noble Lord, Lord Luke, for initiating the debate and for drawing attention to such an important subject for the country's future.

7.54 pm

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, I notice that this debate is about history and I realise that, even though education is a matter devolved to the Welsh Assembly, history has no such particular pigeonhole. History belongs to us all in the various nations of these islands. I remember that, going to school a long time ago, one of the first things that we had was a map of the world on the wall. The British Empire was in pink on that map. It was highlighted not only on that map, but nearly exclusively in what was taught in our history classes. It was the history of Britain and, more particularly, often the history of England.
 
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Even in Wales, the history of Wales was marginalised. I am sure that the same might be said for Scotland. It was the British Empire that had all the emphasis. We knew much more about what the Tudors did in England or in the Empire, as it was then, than about what they were doing in Wales, even though they were a Welsh family. I am sure that in Scotland we would know much more about what the Stuarts did when they ascended the throne of England than about what they did when they were in their own homeland of Scotland.

So we can see how history over the years has tended to be limited in its scope. In school, I learnt nothing of the potato famine that so devastated Ireland. I learnt nothing of the resettlement of Scottish folk in Ulster. I hardly remember a reference to the Holocaust. They were not part of the thinking; it was the British Empire. However, one or two rumours came our way that it was a Welshman, Prince Madoc of Gwynedd, who discovered America in 1160, but even that was not substantiated—but it was there. We were so blinkered when we discussed history.

History teaching today must make amends for the insular approach of the past. The Commonwealth has come home, and as we walk the streets of London, or even the streets of towns in north Wales, we can hear many languages and see many people of different backgrounds. Now that the world has become a much smaller place, it has become a place whose history it is essential that we, too, understand.

New arrivals here grapple with our culture and practices. Africa, Asia and the Middle East are here with us. In realising that we are in the middle of a world that has so many different countries and so many different problems, we need to make sure that our people know that there is a world outside what used to be the old British Empire; for instance, we need to know the consequences of the Balfour declaration and how it has played such a prominent and sometimes not such a beneficial part in the history of the Middle East. We should know about world poverty and what caused it, and how our attitudes in the past have led to the impoverishment of so many countries in the world. Our own people and children in schools need to know of the wide span of world history and, as has already been said, new arrivals to these shores need to know something of our culture, our traditions and our history. So for everyone's sake, we must take off the blinkers and look at the world as one global world with a global history.

Is it possible to look again at the core curriculum in our schools to ensure that it includes a basic knowledge of world history, so that our youngsters know what happened in Africa and Asia, and in other countries, as well as in the UK? People who come here will also have some knowledge of our place as the United Kingdom in history. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively on the widening of our curriculum.

Of course, it is so much easier nowadays. There are so many new advantages. As my noble friend Lord Addington has mentioned, there is film footage
 
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that enables us to see what happened during the First World War. We can see what happened when the gates of Auschwitz were opened. We can be there and in some sense we can relive the horrific events of the past. So many words have been written that were not available in the past. We also now have the internet. In so many schools—I go around schools and they are so different from the schools that I was in as a boy—every desk seems to have its own computer. We have the internet and the expanse of the world that is available via it. History can be made alive; history can become something that means something to people today.

I suggest that history is no longer just a list of battles, kings, princes and presidents. History is the involvement in different sorts of battle: the battle against oppression; the battle against world poverty; and the battle of the individual, sometimes extraordinary individuals and at other times very ordinary individuals, against the circumstances in which they find themselves.

We must appreciate the work of our teachers in our schools and our colleges. We must ensure that our teachers are given the dignity, respect and support that they merit. At the end of the day, when you are teaching history or any other subject, if you are enthusiastic as well as knowledgeable, you can get your message across. Somehow or other, we must give support to those teachers of history so that they not only bring the past to life in their classes but through their influence bring about a sense of understanding and tolerance that will become part of the thinking of the young people whom they teach.

Finally, we do not want history to repeat itself—certainly not many historical incidents—but we can learn from history. By learning from history, we may avoid some of the tragic mistakes of yesteryear.

8.02 pm

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