Any better /

[brionon]

When at school -donkeys years ago-History was Kings and Queens and the powerful. Has it got any better ?

[jake-the-peg]

it did - kids started to look at social history how the lives of ordinary people changed and they learned skills like how to question the reliability of source material.

Unfortunately Michael Gove is now minister for education and seems to think that the role of history is to instill a common approved culture into kids by having them learn the dates of all the Kings and Queens.

He will suceed in instilling a common culture of course - one where everybody hates history lessons

[paddywak]

A few years ago as an adult student I did a history course with the sixth form at the local comp and it was all Suffragettes, Wiemar Republic and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

[Mosaic]

History teaching in schools has been encouraged out by the present Tory regime as it was by the Blairite regime. Both share a desire to prevent the common horde from thinking too deeply. Consequently few schools have the timetable space to teach history, and are running scared from the national curriculum patchwork scheme of work - deviating from this risks adverse grading from Ofsted Inspectors, or 'parasites' as they are known in the trade.
Most schools offer at most 1 hour of history a week by year 9 - the year in which decisions about exam choices are made by pupils.

[cazzz1975]

gcse history when I was at school consisted of world war 2 and the american civil war.

[DaisyNonna]

Depends on the individual school. There are some extremely gifted history teachers if only they are allowed some latitude in what may be taught. Grand daughter following intensely interesting course on the history of medicine.

[Gabriel-Thorpe]

What jake-the-peg says is correct, because I, myself, being a Student at a Secondary School, am having to look at Sources and Social Status, Uprisings, Downfalls and all sorts.