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Lord Dearing: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Luke, for introducing this debate and congratulate him on his sense of timing. It so happens that the curriculum authority is reviewing the whole of the key stage 3 curriculum and A-levels. So, in this debate, we have a chance to influence that body and the department, which will take the final decisions.

I am also conscious that Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools, in a report published last October, urged a complete review of the history curriculum. The factors that were in mind at the time were that only 30 per cent were then choosing to do history at GCSE and even fewer at A-level and beyond. That is sad. The inspector commented that part of the reason for that is that, for some students, the subject is bookish and inaccessible and, to others, not important.

I want to make a few comments: not in the form of a curriculum but about some of the elements that can make history exciting, relevant and, at the same time, a vehicle through which to develop general skills of researching a subject, forming a judgment and producing a balanced argument.
 
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Perhaps I may begin with some elements and then turn to key stage 3 and A-levels. First, if there is to be the excitement, to which more than one noble Lord has referred, in a history lesson the teacher must be excited about the subject. A good national curriculum for history is one that gives a framework but leaves plenty of scope for the teacher to meet the interests of his or her pupils and to express his or her enthusiasms. Then it comes alive. I see a history curriculum, especially in the primary schools, as being about: "It is my school's history curriculum, which incorporates the national history curriculum". There should be that freedom.

Secondly—the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, referred to this—an element of good teaching in history is making use of modern communications technology, both in the classroom, on the whiteboard, and for pupils afterwards on computer. Let me be more explicit. Especially at primary level, where language skills, especially reading, are still at a developmental level, visual images are very expressive and powerful. It so happens—I think that it is still so—there is a tradition that during the early years, children are able to encounter the great civilisations of the past such as Greece, Egypt and, perhaps, in modern times, further afield, in south America. They often study the succession of invading peoples, starting from the Celts, the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings and then the Normans. Those are powerfully expressed visually because they are characterised by dress, ornaments, vehicles, battles and so on.

I agree more with the noble Lord, Lord Luke, than the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, about heroes. In bringing history to life, you must have heroes and villains. I remember a teacher who enthralled me in history. He took us through the French Revolution and I sat spellbound. I was clear that Danton was a villain. "No, no, no", he said, "He was my hero. He had bad faults, but Robespierre was the villain". We discussed that and that brought it and the class to life. There are modern analogues.

Yes, it could be political, but I do not think that that has to be identified. For example, was not Churchill recently voted the first of the Britons? Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the engineer, was voted the second. But for the war, Churchill would have been a rather unimportant failure. He was the man for the time. I believe in seeing those people within their context, with their limitations. Nelson had his limitations, as well as being a very great person. I should like history to encompass a great engineer, such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel, or a scientist, such as Faraday; Mrs Pankhurst in the history of developing a democracy; and Queen Elizabeth in serving her nation with great courage. I should like to include people, but in their context—not entirely in praise, but understanding their limitations.

Good history, especially at primary level, involves hands-on learning and exploring one's own locality. I saw this wonderfully done at the cathedral recently, for people living in Southwark. Children were acting a role. This brings history to life for them, and they do not forget it. Of course, not all of us have something like that, but we have a village church, chapel or
 
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school, which is interesting. It is not just a school; it is about asking why it is there and putting it into its historical context. Even the village post office, missed though it is, is interesting because of the way in which it developed as a response to an historical need—from the time of the penny post in 1840 and so on—and to the railways. History could be about exploring a local hero, personality or event, but hands-on history—the kids talking to the grandparents about something, for instance—is what brings it to life and gets them seeing history as something to be researched rather than read about in a book.

I shall move very rapidly to the key stage 3 curriculum. I would like it to be a chronological survey of what happened in the making of the realm, starting perhaps at 1066 and going through to the Act of Settlement and modern times, and, in so doing, identifying two or three issues of current concern, such as Northern Ireland, which is a problem for us that was inherited from history. I would like children to explore the Commonwealth and the development of democracy, so that they understand that it took us centuries to develop democracy and understand why such a development does not take root easily in Africa or other parts of the world. It did not happen quickly here.

Finally, I am conscious that history, like geography, is one of the humanities that are no longer compulsory. I would like there to be a very challenging and enriching opportunity to study and research several topics in depth and to an A-level standard, which would bring in not only historical roots, but geography, world poverty, art and—where it applies—religion, too. Let me give an example. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, referred to the competition among European nations for empire in Africa and the Middle East. There is the transition, particularly for us, from empire to Commonwealth, and the good, the bad and the remaining problems. Let them study what happened in the first 50 years of the 20th century. Let them study Britain, Palestine and the Balfour Declaration, as well as what happened after the war and what the situation is now. I could give other examples, but time is running out. I want these kids to be able to research, debate and form logical arguments and judgments. I believe that history taught in this way is a valuable education; it is stimulating and relevant and, as George Santayana said, if they understand the past, they will not repeat so many of the mistakes.

8.11 pm

Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. I have to admit to a professional fascination for discussing history teaching. I started life as an historian, and I studied it at university in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In those days, it was really quite straightforward; there was a narrative. I studied English history and European history, which are of course entirely separate and totally unconnected. The only course we had on extra-European history was entitled, "The expansion of Europe". It was about how
 
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Europe had taken over China, India and all the other places, and it all fitted together. One of the problems that we must recognise is that that all fell apart in the 1960s, and we cannot put it together again. Part of the reason why all the history that my children learnt at school was about the Vikings, the Tudors, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler is that we have not yet managed to put it back together again. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, that we cannot leave it to the curriculum working party to devise a new key stage 3. We must have a much broader debate.

Since I left university, I have learnt much more about medieval history than the rather dreadful stuff that I was taught at the University of Cambridge. I intend, as my retirement project, to write what I hope will be a useful little book on how the development of the 12th and 13th-century Yorkshire economy was intimately linked to Florentine banks. The monks, after all, sold their wool crop to Italian bankers until the English Crown of Edward I bankrupted the Bardi and Peruzzi banks. The extent to which 12th and 13th century European economic integration caught England and Scotland up in itself is something that I had simply not begun to understand, because I was taught by good old-fashioned English Protestant historians.

When we talk about history, as the Government have begun to say, we are of course talking about identity, citizenship, Britishness and British values. We recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Luke, said, that we need a story—a narrative. The reason popular history is so alive and academic history in so much trouble is that academic history cannot agree on a narrative. That is what people most like.

Linda Colley said in the Guardian the other week that we need,

"a standardised, chronological history of Britain [which] should become part of the national curriculum [because] . . . schoolchildren need to learn. For how can they grow up to be British citizens if they haven't a clue how Britain came to be what it is?".

We will leave aside for now the question of what Britain is; the question of which bits we remember and which bits we prefer to forget is the battleground now. We remember bits of our past and do our best to forget others. The great argument in Bristol the other month was how far Bristol should remember that it made its prosperity trading in slaves, or whether it should slide over that bit and pretend it was all about wine. When Ministers talked the other day about the need to have a British national day, I spent an interesting half hour trying to think which national day we should celebrate. Would it be Trafalgar, or Waterloo? I fancy the cutting off of King Charles's head myself, but others might disagree. How about the Bill of Rights in 1689? That is a Protestant festival and Catholics are extremely unhappy about it. Trying to choose a national day immediately makes us partisans of one or other view of British history.

The noble Lord, Lord Luke, takes, as I was taught it in the 1960s, the "conservative" view of British history—that history is about great men, heroes and villains. The "radical", more popular, progressive view
 
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already in the early sixties was that we need to talk about the common stream, the common people, and social and economic change as it affected most of our ancestors, not simply our masters. Linda Colley's narrative is different from the one that Niall Ferguson or Andrew Roberts would give. Roberts is now setting out to write a new history of the English-speaking peoples to demonstrate that Britain has absolutely no connection with those nasty people across the Channel, but is intimately connected with the Canadians, Australians and, above all, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans. David Starkey's view of British history is different again from that of the noble Lord, Lord Morgan.

As for our views on Europe, I have had a professional life dealing with European Union enlargement and we have had arguments with all the potential applicants about how they are the last European state, and the ones behind them are clearly not Europeans. This demonstrates that world history is a battleground. Can we agree on a history of Islam, of Iran, or of China?

On the point of my noble friend Lord Addington, film gives you the illusion of evidence. I can recall seeing various pictures of the Sino-Japanese war in which the same film was used to illustrate entirely opposite points of view. The illusion of evidence is worsened by factoid history. For reasons you will understand, I find "Braveheart"—immediately adopted as standard history by the Scottish National Party—one of the most appalling mistakes in entirely misrepresenting Scottish history and that of my distant family.

We need a cross-party consensus, not a Government initiative, let alone one by the curriculum authority. We need an open debate. I am glad that the Royal Society of Arts is planning a series of lectures this autumn, which a number of people will be contributing to on precisely what sort of history we need. We need a commission—or a working party or whatever—with representatives of a range of different views. This is not something the Government can do on their own.

We need to teach the history of the last century, and of our own last 50 years. That is the most difficult. I heard a senior Conservative MP this morning say to a group of visiting Russians that Britain was lucky not to have experienced problems of post-imperial angst or nostalgia, as Russia had. At which point somebody said, "What about Suez?". What about the defence of the trade routes to India for 25 years after we gave India independence? We need to debate what our national past is, but in order to do that we must recognise how difficult that is. We need a cross-party approach to construct a more inclusive national narrative, which we desperately need, and to place British history in its broader European and global context.

8.19 pm

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