The Future of History

I read a newspaper article by the journalist David Aaronovitch writing for The Times on the seemingly impossible nature of teaching the history of Britain on top of expanding their knowledge (however brief) on the history of Europe, Australasia, Africa, Russia and the Americas to secondary school and University students in the time they partake in studying History. He noted how the recent change in the national curriculum relating to History, put in place by the Education Secretary Michael Gove, completely altered how school children and University undergraduates would go about questioning the centuries gone before them and limit their ability to assess the importance of different epochs in history that have changed the politics of the world for better or for worse. Aaronovitch seemingly concurs, as do I, with the feelings put across by the travel writer and historian William Dalrymple. Complaining about how his children have a limited knowledge of history, Dalrymple berates the repeated teachings of the Tudors and Nazis, with not even a 'whiff of Indian history.' Dalrymple further states how it is his firm belief that through this new found curriculum, the teaching of history will almost be defunct and pointless if schools are merely going to teach issues that have been analysed and evaluated into the ground beneath our feet. He shows how it not only narrows students' perspectives on the outside world and their histories, but also deprives them of a chance of studying aspects of history through which they could see patterns, see where generals failed on the battlefields across the Continents, and envisage what the future may possibly hold for governments currently in office around the world. Or is that Gove's intention? To narrow the teaching of History as much as he possibly can without resorting to Francis Fukuyama's 'end of history' argument put across in his compelling book 'The End of History and the Last Man'.

In his book, Fukuyama refers to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc as the point in history from which events led to, in his opinion, 'the end of mankind's ideological evolution and universalisation of Western democracy as the final form of human government.' As Ishaan Tharoor, a writer for TIME magazine wrote last year, it was this mentality that continued the 'World is flat' notion, where the idea that a continuously evolving and prosperous world was unforeseeable on the assumption that the success of liberal Democracy, and the evolution of what Fukuyama defines as 'laissez faire capitalism', would lead to the collapse of a better and progressive society. So is the future of History really this dire? Is this notion of narrowing pupils study of history a concept that we should collaborate with or rebel against in the desire to allow for the further development of future Historians as well as developing students into more worldly knowledgeable people rather than recent graduates with only limited knowledge on issues such as the already over-studied Nazi regime and wives of Henry VIII?

Having studied History throughout school (notably European (Nazi's) and that of Britain at home throughout the ages), as well as at University where I was able to widen my gaze in relation to the knowledge of different areas in history I wanted to focus on, I believe that this notion that Gove wants to narrow such a curriculum as being terribly blind and naive. Whilst at University, I was able to focus my attention on all kinds of history; from the troubles faced within the African Diasporas, the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, to the the construction of the notion of Men and Women throughout the ages, the Enlightenment, and General Historical Problems. As a result, I would feel comfortable in saying that I have profited from a wide range of subjects on offer to me and has enabled me to look on different cultures and countries in different lights when relating to the histories of each one at any given time. To deny a student that option would lead to grave side effects, and severely dent the attraction to study History for students in their post-School days. 

On to the televised side of History. The History Channel has been under the pseudonym of 'the Hitler Channel' for many a year now, and if it isn't showing a black and white video of a battle between Montgomery and Rommel in Africa during the Second World War or Hitler's attempt to invade Russia in the Winter, then it is only dispersed by the odd money loan adverts and the annoying guy off the Go Compare adverts being sucked into a black hole, or have they found a new way to get rid of the wannabe Pavarotti? I have to say, if I was to pinpoint any given History based TV show that got me involved in wanting to further my studying of History, I would have to say it was the World At War series (filmed between 1973 and 1974) that gave me my History fill when I was a kid of 12 or 13 - forever inquisitive and wanting to know more about what the past held and how it shaped the world we lived in then. Several years down the line, it was the Snow family father and son (Peter and Dan) combination that furthermore attracted me to evolve my interest in History. Their 2004 TV series 'Battlefield Britain' gave a 14 year old boy interested in History everything he wanted, from interactive battlefields, to interesting and informative, yet not dull commentary and offering up of facts. Dan Snow's spin off series of 'Filthy Cities' and the more recent 'History of Railways' further added to my inquisitive side. Through these TV series, Peter and Dan Snow looked at combining new techniques to teach and put across the history of Britain in an informative and easy to understand format for those with a basic knowledge of the chosen topic of discussion. Nevertheless, there has been an argument that programmes such as these look to glamorise the nature of a historian's work, showing a fun element as well as a celebrity status arising as a result of successful TV series. It has led to a fear that some people may go forward and study, graduate, teach or research history based concepts and be led astray by the success of these programmes and presenters. A play for which I am, to this day, grateful for showing the much needed alternative side to the coin to being a History teacher and researcher was Alan Bennett's 'The History Boys'. In the play, it shows Irwin become this successful TV presenter doing programmes on the dissolution of British monasteries, whereas on the flip side there is Hector, a chubby, lonely, and depressed teacher who graduated from Hull University and is teaching in a public school where expectation is as low as a pendulum on a great grandfather clock, locked in a continual perpetual motion where one can only look to continue a trend, to send students to mediocre Universities at the time: Leeds, Leicester and Exeter, not Cambridge, Durham or Oxford. Nonetheless, Hector believed in breaking this so called 'trend' and with the help of Irwin and Mrs Lintott, the students achieve the unexpected and get places at Oxford and Cambridge alike. The inclusion of thinking the unexpected, arguing the previously grey matter within history, and knowing knowledge for the sake of knowing it, all brought a different perspective to my approach towards studying and dissecting the nature of certain events in history and the people involved in bringing these events to the forefront of everyone's world.

So I conclude with a simple message, that History is not a subject within which one should confine oneself to only a couple of topics, but to expand their knowledge surrounding the subject as broad and wide-ranging as they possibly can. There is no such thing as being too knowledgeable. Each day will be history once it has come and gone so History is a subject that can never be 'dead' or 'forgotten'. True, there have been instances in past ages when History repeats itself but what historians must do, along with politicians and analysts is to prove that there could be a way to deny it happening once more over.

I leave you with a quote from the same article I opened this blog on;

'History, the endless curiosity about how people have lived; the discipline of discovering the past by using and evaluating sources, balancing claims, coming to senses of likelihood and causality.' (David Aaronovitch)

Jonathan Whitehead