A post about "Three Wise Men"

I am a sucker for Christmas. I love carols, trees, glitter, lights, German markets and Nativity sets. But I am also a history teacher, accustomed to look closely at primary sources and consider their meaning. Because I am a church choir person I must have heard St Matthew's version of the Christmas story a hundred times or more and it does seem to me that his story of wise men from the east has got so loaded with traditions and myths that it has become very difficult to hear as Matthew might have meant it. This was one source for my play.

Somewhere in Evelyn Waugh's wartime diaries he meditates upon the story of the wise men and reflects what a good parable it is for artists. The Magi misunderstand what is happening, they turn up late and they cause terrible trouble, but their gifts are accepted. This comment struck home with me. Waugh was a creative artist; I was a school teacher, and it seems to me that the story of the wise men was an even better parable for those who consider themselves highly educated and learned. That was another source for the play.

Even when dealing with serious subjects I usually take my advice from Desiderius Erasmus: “What is the matter with telling the truth with a smile”, so there are many witty scenes and jokes. Being a teacher myself I felt no compunction about making fun of the profession. But the story contains many dreadful things – the tyranny of Herod, the massacre of the Innocents, the refugee flight into Egypt. I have pulled no punches on these. The play was written in the late 1980's, and it was alarming to discover, while typing it out on a computer for publication, that the scenes involving tyrants and massacres and refugees might as well have been written today, not in 1989.

Various friends and colleagues said nice things about the play. One good judge particularly liked the rhythm of the dialogue, which was very flattering. There were one or two criticisms from folk who felt I was casting doubt on the historical accuracy of St Matthew's account. My answer to that is this: If the story, and all its details, was an event in history it is certainly interesting – but it was all a long time ago and we live 2,000 years later. If, however, it is partly a work of the imagination it can be as true today as it was when first written. Take “Pride and Prejudice” as an example of what I mean. That is a made-up story, and often very funny, but it contains eternal truths about love and snobbery and women's rights.

In the play St Matthew directs events. I tried to follow his version – about the importance of the prophets, for example – rather than intrude my own.

The original cast consisted of school pupils aged 11 to 13. Some readers may have thought, wrongly, that junior pupils would have had trouble with the sophisticated concepts and dialogue presented here. This was not at all the case. Writing “down” for children is a terrible error, too often committed. No pupil who wanted to be in the show was turned away, and the many substantial parts were done superbly. It does seem to me that it would work well with older actors. Read it and see what you think.

When I wrote the play the school was boys only, so it was easy to follow St Matthew and have only one female in the play. The boy who played Mary was first rate. I see no problem for any director who wished to give any of the parts to girls or women. Twenty years later, when the school was fully co-educational, I was lucky to direct “Henry V”. We had girls as French Ambassador, Governor of Harfleur, Boy, and M le Fer. Two girls shared the role of Chorus very well indeed. There are as many parts for females as for males in this play. The whole point about acting is that on stage you are not the same person as you are off.

I hope you enjoy reading it. If you do, you will have something extra to think about every time you hear the story of the wise men. Here is the link to it:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Wise-Men-Christmas-history-ebook/dp/B01N1OZL5W/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_img_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=Q1AZKW43H74BEV8MZEFZ

Teaching History at a Secondary School

Teaching History

“The best way to teach is to be chaotic and confusing” Professor Richard Feynman

In April 2016 I was invited to give a talk about history teaching to our local PROBUS group. My career had been in a secondary school, with pupils aged between 10 and 18. They were an even more distinguished group of retired senior professionals than I had realised. I discovered this after the talk, over lunch. However, I had taken the task seriously and had done my best for them. This is what I wrote – though I do not say I spoke exactly the words on the page.

* * * * *

A friend of mine, knowing how fond I am of Venice, lent me a novel called “Miss Garnett’s Angel”. It tells of one who is spiritually and emotionally dead who is brought back to vibrant humanity by the light and the art and the atmosphere of that lovely city, bride of the sea. In order to start the story the novelist must create a character who is flat, boring, without purpose in life. Who else but a teacher of history?

I must admit that I found it hard to enjoy the novel after such an opening.

However, I do not condemn the novelist too much. In one of the Little Grey Rabbit stories that I enjoyed as a child there is one in which Wise Owl’s tree house is blown down in a storm. Grey Rabbit and her friends are rescuing his scattered possessions. Hare gathers up his books. One lies in a puddle but remains completely dry. It is a history book. Hare says of something: “It’s as dull as this history book” and chucks it back in the puddle where it remains, quite dry.

The point is that this perception of history as dull is a common part of our culture, and comes, presumably, from a misunderstanding of what history is, and, it must be admitted, from too many teachers, lessons and textbooks who are misled by this misunderstanding into going about things the wrong way.

In the course of my career I sometimes had to explain to headmasters, and often to parents, that learning more facts off a longer list would not make children better at history, even if it might get them more marks in some tests and exams. I gather from things said by some politicians and some journalists that this wrong view of history is still pretty strong. Teachers in what one might call rival disciplines, such as Modern Studies, sometimes caricature history as merely the learning of factual notes. It does make it sound a very dull subject!

One of the reasons why this is all a dreadful misunderstanding is because learning facts about the past is not the main thing that historians do. There are surprisingly few “facts” about the past about which there is a sufficient consensus to have them taught as absolute fact to be memorised. The many arguments about the causes of the First World War that took place in 2014 were not just between historians on one side and politicians and journalists on the other. They also took place within the academic community. One might consider the Highland Clearances, the Norman Conquest and the causes of the American Civil War as other areas where there is not a consensus. What causes or results is a pupil to memorise?

Take one specific example. When I started teaching, in 1973, the Soviet Union was one of the two world super-powers. It was a success in its own terms. It had played a supreme part in the defeat of Nazism. It had been the first to achieve manned space flight.

Then in 1989 its empire collapsed and soon the USSR itself ceased to exist. I think it is the only time I neglected lesson preparation and marking for the sake of watching news after news. (By the time Barrack Obama was standing for election I was also teaching Politics, so watching the news counted as preparation.) Suddenly the whole of the history of the Russian Empire since Peter the Great changed. It was no longer about the creation of a great power, where school books emphasised the things that made for reform and progress and development (even if some other things were pretty dreadful). It became the story of a temporary experiment that went wrong, and all the weaknesses and problems that could be seen in the old Empire became more prominent.

Imagine a production of “Macbeth” which ends with Macbeth entering carrying MacDuff’s head and the “boy Malcolm” is rapidly disposed of. This would not alter merely the ending of the play, but the whole play. So it is with history. The ends of our stories keep changing, and so the whole story changes, not just the ending. What are these “facts” that should be learned?

[At the end of the talk a question was asked about whether the “facts” in History classes sometimes reflected chauvinism. I answered cautiously, because I did not wish to get into a political wrangle. However two points made in reply included: (1) When I was learning about the Spanish Armada as a child almost everything available had been written by people who had been involved in Britain resisting invasion in 1940. This was bound to have coloured their approach. In fact all the history that is written and taught is affected by the circumstances of the time. The important thing is to make pupils aware of this. (2) History teachers generally do not like it when politicians decree what must be in the syllabus. I understand that this point has affected the English National Curriculum. It certainly affected Higher History here in Scotland, where the SNP Government insisted that Paper 2 should be all Scottish History. In case anyone thinks I am biased against Scottish History I must declare that I have taught it, written books about it and am employed by the SQA to examine it. But I still do not like politicians telling us what history to teach]

Here’s another problem. It concerns the limitations of thought and language. We are far too inclined to think and to talk in generalisations. Consider the following sentence:

“In the middle of the fifth century the Roman Empire collapsed under pressure from barbarian hordes.”

So far so good. Learn it. It’s true. But hang on a minute. It may be a sort of truth, but it is almost utterly worthless. What is this “middle of the fifth century?” If I said “in the middle of the twentieth century” you would know that this might be before or after the invention of the atom bomb, before or after Mao came to power in China, before or after the defeat of Hitler, before or after Indian independence, before or after any of us were born, come to that. If I said that in 456 AD Romulus Augustulus was killed by Odovacer, king of the Rugians the extra detail would help. But it would help very little, unless we knew enough about the fifth century for 456 to mean something.

But wait another minute. “The Roman Empire”? In 456AD there were two Roman Empires, and the Eastern Empire, capital city Byzantium, was in all sorts of ways stronger, richer, more civilised – more everything – than the Empire of the West. The Eastern Empire kept going, with many difficulties to be sure, for another thousand years. It was the Roman Empire in the West that collapsed. A very different thing.

The Eastern Empire, incidentally, included the great Library at Alexandria. Later this was burned by the Vandals, an act which gave their name a subsidiary meaning which we now take for granted, even if we couldn’t tell a Vandal from an Ostrogoth. There is a delightful reminiscence by George Orwell: when he learned of this destruction at his prep school he felt nothing but pleasure. There was that much less Greek literature to translate.

I digress. “Chaos and confusion”. I did warn you. Let’s get back to my sentence. “Collapsed under pressure from…” Wait a minute. That’s a metaphor from civil engineering or something. One imagines a dam bursting or a tower collapsing. It tells us nothing at all about how the Roman Empire in the West collapsed or what the barbarians did.

I’m going to digress again. We’ll get to the end of this sentence in the end, if we’re lucky. My sister, slightly older than me, was a successful academic scientist throughout her career. On retirement she did an MA course in Lake District Studies at Lancaster University and has become a serious historian of Lake District affairs. Because she has a scientific education, training and career she has brought a critical outsider’s eye to the career of historian. Leaving aside the tendency to pass judgement on insufficient evidence, and a desperate search for “significance” where none exists, she has been very critical of the tradition of rhetoric in history.

At school and undergraduate level the exam essay, written from memory, usually in an hour or less, remains the mainstay of the subject. This literary form, the exam essay, was developed during the nineteenth century specifically as a training in rhetoric. At the public schools and the ancient universities, pupils and students were trained to become advocates and ministers of religion and diplomats and politicians, careers for which rhetoric was a crucial ingredient. The ability to synthesise masses of material from books and tables into a brief, relevant, coherent whole was also a valuable skill for those in public life.

As far as I was concerned teaching writing was as important as teaching reading. One very happy episode was when the deputy rector found that our juniors had one fewer English lesson per week than was normal, and one more History lesson. He suggested that we should give up one lesson to English. It was a proud moment when the Head of English said “No. They teach writing so well – especially non-fiction – that they use the time well. Let them keep the lesson”.

The essay remains the bedrock of history education below degree level, and that is fair enough. After all, the history teacher does not expect most of his pupils to become post-graduate historians any more than the piano teacher expects pupils to become professional players. But it has given skill with words, plausibility, fluency, subtle ambiguity, persuasiveness and so on more importance than simple conclusions based on evidence. The historian whose purpose is to sell history books to the general public still finds these useful qualities. But – and it is a very big qualification – all too often words can be used to hide a lack of evidence or a lack of simple conclusions. “Collapsed under pressure from”, forsooth.

Let us return to our sentence. “In the middle of the fifth century” (feeble) “the Roman Empire” (rubbish) “collapsed under pressure from” (meaningless metaphor) “the barbarian invasions”. Blimey! What on earth were they? Barbarians, indeed. I wonder if the person who wrote the word “barbarians” knows an Ostrogoth from a Vandal or a Pict from a Scot. What about the Gothic leaders who were educated within the Roman Empire and sought to become part of it? What about the Attila’s Huns, drinking fermented mares’ milk and charging irresistibly across Europe?

By the way, I must have another digression here. Since I left university, DNA studies have become part of the everyday life of the historian, especially where written documents give out, as they do in the fifth century. They have discovered that they are no help in telling which parts of Britain were settled by Saxons and which by Norsemen. These raiding peoples all came by sea from the Baltic regions and their DNA is jumbled together. But in Brittany a village has been found where the DNA is wildly different from the neighbours. The people look Breton – they are Breton. But their DNA is wildly different.

There is some documentary evidence that a group of Huns, from somewhere east of the Pripet Marshes, did not return home but settled. Perhaps they have been found.

Incidentally, this story illustrates another feature of the history lesson. The teacher should use whatever snippets of interest come to hand. I do not have footnoteable authority for this DNA story, but I do have it from the conversation of an Oxford don – a medievalist – after a few gin-and-vermouths.

This talk must not turn into a lecture on the barbarians, but a moment’s thought shows us that if Picts and Lombards and Franks and Visigoths and Scots and Britons and Jutes – to name but a few – are lumped together the resulting generalisation is certainly meaningless, factually useless, and probably insulting.

The main point of the talk so far is to illustrate two aspects of history teaching that are not always understood. One is that there is not a clear consensus about the past which we can make children learn off by heart. The other is that one thing we must teach in all schools is the importance of reading critically.

I just want to stay with this lack of consensus a moment before moving on. This year is the hundredth anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. I saw a post on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, put by a professional historian: “Was the Somme a German victory or an Allied victory?” If you want to be good at history you have to think about the past, not just remember it.

However, I cannot stress enough that I am not saying historians do not need to know stuff, and a lot of it.

I have often asserted that spelling is the least important aspect of written English – compared with word choice, sentence structure, punctuation and so on. This has lead many of my critics to say “He doesn’t think spelling matters” – when I never said anything of the sort. So note well, I have not said knowledge is not important for the study of history.

Good historians know masses of history. If you saw the grand final of University Challenge the other week you will have noticed that five of the eight students taking part were historians. I am very much a school-teacher historian; but I did, about thirty years ago, attend some post-graduate public lectures and discussions that were offered at Edinburgh University. It was clear in the questions that the learned academics there expected to argue about particular documents and precise calendar dates entirely from memory. And for the school pupil there are exams.

As a teacher one had to devise ways of helping pupils commit material to memory. Memory has, of course, a lot to do with interest. Pupils would say “I can’t remember this. There’s so much to learn” and then one would find they knew the names of all the goalkeepers in the Premier League. I remember chatting about this to a friend at my prep school – this would be the late 1950s in North London. I believe one of his younger cousins has become famous as an author. He said: “I like it when there’s a history learning prep. Then I think ‘A 1! No prep!’”. He and I were so interested in the history classes that we just remembered the stuff without having to learn it from notes.. I found it quite hard to change my ways when I got older and this prep school technique no longer worked.

When I was starting out in teaching I commented to an experienced colleague how even our ablest pupils seemed to remember nothing of what they had done as juniors, whereas I could. “Ah” he said, “but you became a history teacher.”

This dear friend, now passed away, had received his army training in the last year of the Second World War. During one dull lecture on hygiene he and his fellow officer cadets were dozing quietly when a camouflaged figure with blackened faced leapt in, lobbed a couple of thunder flashes and a smoke grenade amongst the pupils and sprayed the room with Tommy Gun fire. When the young men crept out from under the desks they found the Medical Officer standing with arms folded. “That woke you buggers up at the back”, he drawled.

My own father, an English teacher, happened one autumn to be teaching “Henry V”. On St Crispin’s day he let off a Roman Candle.

The army has got pretty good at teaching rote learning. I must have been fifteen in the CCF when I learned how to give a fire order: “GRIT. Group; Range; Indication; Type of Fire!!” The following week we learned the duties of a sentry: Dir Ex Pos Nam Pro Par Sig Pas Dir.

My only success with this mnemonic lark came with Disraeli’s Second Ministry.

There used to be a feeble exam called O-level. It was supposed to be a two-year course, but not only did we cover it in one year, as a matter of course, I used to be given characters who had decided to take the subject up in the Sixth Form and get them through O-level in one term. One dead certainty was the domestic reforms of Disraeli’s Second Ministry. Let me run through them for you:

Artisans’ Dwelling Act

Rivers Pollution Act

Sale of Food and Drugs Act

Employers and Workingmen Act

Factory Act

Agricultural Enclosures Act

Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act

Education Act

Public Health Act

Merchant Shipping Act

I am rather pleased with that. If you arrange them in that order the initial letters of the acts spell out “Arse-face PM”. I don’t remember any pupils failing once I had worked this out, and several got As. Like I said, O-level History was a feeble exam.

As far as possible I tried to have my pupils remember material as my friend and I had done at prep-school. With so much immersion in class – readings, questions, discussion, lectures, exercises of various sorts – that the material became internalised. In the end, of course, there was nothing for it but for them to give time to learning; but I hope memory was always linked to researching or using the material.

One of the very big ways that school history has changed since I started is that syllabi are now strictly limited and clearly defined. When I started, the A-level History syllabus was one page in a small booklet. I was set to teach a paper called “Outlines of European History” and only by studying past papers could you guess what might come up. A good candidate could revise hard seven topics and two would come up. A chancer could skim through three topics and they would all come up. One year I recall half the questions in our chosen 200 years were about France, there was one on Russia, one on Spain and one on Italy. Now there is a clearly defined syllabus, in a booklet of its own, and candidates are expected to have studied all of it, but nothing else. So revision memory-work can be precisely directed.

Last Saturday we had the first examiners’ meeting of the year for Advanced Higher History. We were taking a selection of last years’ dissertations and discussing them so as to confirm our agreed standards before the markers are presented with twenty-five new dissertations to mark in three days, and we hover about standardising them. The criteria for awarding marks have been refined and developed over fifteen years – you can find them on-line - and the two key qualities are analysis and thoroughness, which is more or less what I have said so far: power of thought and quantity of stuff. In the dissertations thoroughness does not depend on memory, but they also have to do a three-hour exam. Incidentally, the quantity of stuff has to be relevant, and it has to contribute to the analysis if the candidate is going to reach good marks.

I am very glad to say that I ended the meeting feeling uplifted by the superb quality of much of the work that is done by final-year pupils in schools.

I was having a conversation at school, twenty years ago, about memory and debate with one of my colleagues, a modern linguist. He had trouble seeing my point. For him there was so much grammar and vocabulary to learn that it occupied almost all the school years, except for maybe some debate about literature in the final year.

The example I used to explain how history was different was the death of Harold at the Battle of Hastings. Everyone knows that he was killed with an arrow in the eye. You can learn it from umpteen books. But even a ten-year old can look at the only piece of evidence for this we have – the Bayeux Tapestry. The words “Harold Rex Interfectus Est” are the caption for one frame. The word “Harold” is written over a Saxon soldier clutching an arrow that has pieced his eye. The words “Interfectus Est” are over a Saxon soldier being cut down by a Norman mounted knight with a sword. Which is Harold? I spent a long time debating this with our Primary Sevens – the youngest pupils I taught – for history is not “What happened in the past” but “The debate about what happened in the past”.

I have just deliberately used the phrase “Everyone knows that”… One of the most important jobs of the historian, and so of the school history teachers, is to examine and question myths. Sometimes a myth can be true: “Hitler was awful”. But it can be believed as a myth or it can be believed as a matter of judgement, based on knowledge and understanding.

In practice most myths turn out to be either completely untrue, or, more often, turn out to be simplified, selective, half-truths, un-nuanced and untested. My six-year old grandson loves Star Wars fights, whether with light sabres or Lego models. These play-fights are always goodies against baddies. And the baddies (that’s grandpa) always lose. Most common discourse - journalistic, over a drink in a pub, by politicians – is conducted by trading over-simplified myths. One of the things a historian should always do is say: “Hang on a minute. There’s a bit more to it than this.” Or “It wasn’t quite like that”.

No historian I imagine – certainly not a school teacher – is so arrogant as to suppose he can correct all myths. It is a matter of a way of thinking, not of always knowing the right answer.

I used to say that there were two things I wanted all my pupils to remember: one was that Vikings did not have horns in their helmets. The other was that the Battle of Culloden was not fought between Scotland and England.

Myths which now appear almost weekly in our media today include deification of Winston Churchill and an assumption that Appeasement caused the Second World War. There is so much more to be said on both topics. For that matter I wonder how many people who have very strong opinions about Mrs Pankhurst and the Suffragettes know that the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly in favour of votes for women three years before the First World War. Or those people who think of Napoleon as a good strategist forget the utterly ridiculous attempt to conquer Egypt without first gaining command of the sea.

In history we do not believe everything we are told, and we do not subscribe to “everybody knows that..” . The past is to be investigated and debated, even at school.

Since I was at school, and since I started teaching, the huge change in the examination system has been the number of marks now awarded, and questions set, that require critical use of primary sources, and of the rival interpretations of modern historians. The various exam boards vary in how these are examined, and on the amount of weight given to them. But I never encountered them till I went to university, whereas now they are part of Higher, of GCSE, of A-level and of Advanced Higher. The main point of exams is not to arrange children in order and to give them certificates, but to see that they have worthwhile courses in preparing for the exams. So now, in order to cope with modern exams, they have to learn to weigh up interpretations and evaluate and read critically. Usually when there is some news in the press about a new exam system it means that the balance of marks between the various elements has been changed. Up until about 1980 we did nothing but essays, on various topics – and I guess you did too. Essays are still a big part of history – quite right too - but now there are long dissertations, comparison questions about primary sources, the critical balancing of rival interpretations and so on. As I say, different boards go about things differently. I would say that the best pupils at Advanced Higher go into far greater depth, whereas the best pupils at A-level do more critical work on sources. They are both good courses.

In the class room there have been three changes in technology that have revolutionised history teaching since I began.

One is the photocopier. I think I need not develop that point. How did we manage for two-thousand years without it?

The second was the video recorder. We had one in each history classroom by 1995. I recall the deputy rector complaining about teachers showing their classes a lot of videos once the exams were over. I replied: “Well, I’m all right then. I show them a lot before exams too.” He protested. “Look here”, says I, “you are a scientist. The video for me is like a practical for you. Which is better? Me telling them about the long-bow or them seeing one being fired on TV? Which is better? Me telling them Hitler was a successful public speaker or me showing a film of him making a speech?” He is a good friend of mine, and got the point.

The third was the personal computer. I remember the first one coming into the school, bought by a Maths teacher out of his own money. But for my last three years I had an interactive smart whiteboard and could summon the internet at will. Telling S1 about Drake’s expedition to the West Indies, we could go there courtesy of Google Earth. Telling P7 the story of Caedmon, the Northumbrian poet; well, I googled “Caedmon” and in less than a minute we were listening to a voice reading one of his poems in the original Anglo-Saxon. I know that you-tube has now replaced the VCR.

One of my department was away for a year. We needed a substitute. There arrived a young man called Mark, who handed in his PhD – on Maitland of Lethington – the day before his first term began. He turned out to be an excellent scholar, a wonderful personality and a born teacher. “You can’t let him go” I was told. So the timetable was re-organised and he stayed even when the absentee returned. I think we all had to teach one set of English, so as to make up the timetable arithmetic.

After a few years with us he went off to be Head of History at Charterhouse, and then a housemaster there. He became a Headmaster before he was forty. Then he was killed in a car crash.

After that I insisted in my department, as a memorial to Mark Loughlin, that there should never be a boring lesson. The others responded well. It took me a while to learn this – there need never be a boring lesson in History. There is no such thing as “This information is boring but you’ve got to learn it.”

There is so much I have not had time to talk about. School trips to Prague, and China and the Ypres Salient. History Society Youth Hostel weekends in the Borders. The Arts Foundation Course, where we took Fifth Year types to concerts and plays and art exhibitions. But the bedrock was what went on in the classroom, and in the pupils’ own time.

I have not, perhaps, lived up to Feynman’s ideal of chaos and confusion, but I have tried to leave more questions than I have answers. If senior pupils asked me how to get better at History exams the answer was “Practice”. But if they asked how to get better at History – which is not quite the same thing – the answer was “Read and think”.

The elderly teacher ground down by a lifetime of going over the same old stuff with unresponsive pupils is the stuff of fiction. You may have seen “The Browning Version” by Terrence Rattigan. The depressed teacher in that is called Harris, come to think of it.

If all history meant was learning more notes, I would never have stuck it out. In fact history is an ever-changing, thought-provoking, life-enhancing subject. By the end of my career I though I had the best job in Scotland, and I am very grateful to you for letting me talk a little about it.

Wall displays in a history class-room

Yesterday there was a tweet asking for ideas for what to put on a history teacher's class-room wall. So this seems a good moment for me to try and remember what worked for me, and what did not.

Perhaps I should start by admitting that when I was a pupil there was almost nothing on the walls that I now remember, except when one admired teacher put up various jokey headlines and adverts that included his name or initials. Also I began my career in a room which had no useful display space. However, in due course I reached a large room (Scottish Enlightenment, Regency, big windows, south facing: wasn't I lucky!) with pin-boards on the back wall ready for use. Sometimes the displays were less than wall-paper, but some things worked, perhaps, so here goes.

For sheer colour and vibrancy I once bought a load of old calendars (which can usually be picked up very cheap from about February) and got my form-class to use a class-teacher period to use them to cover every inch of space on the boards. This got a good deal of reaction from other classes and led to some intelligent conversations.

Occasionally with pupils of about 13 I would set an exercise of wall-chart making. In the end I found this was best done in pairs, not because it produced better charts, but because the process of collaboration was in itself valuable. The intelligent conversations (again) about a worthwhile project were part of education. There would be a central theme (The Reformation, the Napoleonic Wars or whatever) but each chart would be on a different subject, chosen by lot. There would be fairly strict rules about size (A3 paper provided) and a rule that there had to be a mixture of pictures and writing. Once the charts were all posted on the wall I would make a work-sheet and have a lesson in which each pupil took the worksheet on a circular tour round the charts, all starting in a different place. This not only perhaps increased their awareness of history, but also achieved that difficult objective of getting children to see and appreciate the work of their fellows.

The day after that remarkable Conservative MP vote which led to Mrs Thatcher's resignation as Prime Minister, I happened to notice in the newsagents that the headlines were all different. They even disagreed on the facts. On impulse I bought all the papers, and went back to school to put up their front pages as a display that spoke for itself. This led to more debate and discussion than anything else I remember and I wish I had done it more often. However, it did require an event of similar type, the time to get the display up within 48 hours, the chance of noticing the papers, and the chance of having enough cash-in-pocket to buy them all on impulse. But it is recommended.

As far as pictures are concerned the work of great artists (in reproduction) is always worth displaying. Since this was also where I spent my working day I was happy to spend a little money on it (the wall was in front of me all the time; behind the pupils). And one can never tell if a great work of art may strike some chord in a viewer which may bear fruit in the future. In a recent TV documentary I heard Prince Charles make that point about growing up in Buckingham Palace.

When I bought a reproduction of the Bayeaux Tapestry in Jorvik I was surprised to find that it was too long to fit between the main door of the room and the door to the Department Resources. But it was still worth the drawing-pin effort. This latter is not to be taken lightly, by the way. Many a day my finger ends were sore because I had been taking down a display.

What was on the front of the room, in the pupil's view all the time? Well, over the years I moved from a black-board to a white board to a video-screen to an interactive computer screen in various combinations. In retrospect I liked the black-board best. But there always remained, high up, a magnificent map of Europe which I had been given by my predecessor. Hardly a day passed when one did not wish to point to the Baltic, or Gallipoli, or Cork, or Lombardy.

Wall displays were quite a low priority in my teaching and sometimes the same weary collection of images would outstay their welcome. But the above stories are all true, and might give some ideas.

History Exam Revision

This advice is based on four decades of experience as a teacher and as an examiner. I hope it is useful to you.

1. Practise.

My good friend the Director of Sixth Form (now a headmaster) once brought in a university expert on revision to talk to our senior pupils. He gave everyone a post-it note and asked us to write down (a) something they were good at and (b) how they got good at it. Answers to (a) ranged from hockey to playing the bagpipes, via cooking. Answers to (b) almost all included the word “Practice”. I have rarely seen a point so effectively made.

All exam boards publish past papers on-line. Even if your teacher does not provide you with past papers, get hold of old questions and use them for practice. This is by far the best thing you can do for revision.

Earlier in the course it can be useful to write massive essays of thousands of words in length, as a way of getting to grips with a topic. During revision-time, however, practice essays should be strictly limited to the length possible in the exam. The obvious method is to set a timer for the appropriate length and stick to it. However, it can also be useful to spend as long as you like researching and crafting an essay that is of the same number of words you would manage in the limited time.

My two other recent posts on essay-writing may be helpful here. I very much hope your teachers will read your practice answers and take a few minutes to go through them with you. If you are doing self-assessment, make sure you refer at all times to the published exam-board mark-schemes.

Not all exam questions are essays. Also practise source questions, short answers and so on. Always practise with an appropriate time limit.

2. Learn stuff

This obvious advice comes second in importance to practise, but it is still important. There is no quick and easy way of doing this; you just need to put the time in. Some pupils would say “Oh I find it so hard to remember things” – and then one would find they knew the names of all the Premier League managers, or had recently played a large part in a school play. You can do it, but you have to give time to it.

In History there is no precise list of what you must know. The best candidates know lots, but they do not all know the same things. However, your factual revision should be closely related to the syllabus content as listed on line by the exam boards. When I sat A-level (before the first Moon landings) we had a loosely defined syllabus and a wide choice of questions. The modern approach is to have a tightly defined syllabus and a very limited choice of questions. Make sure your memory work fits with the syllabus topics.

Your memory work should include broad outline and general points. But do also make your own list (not too long) of statistics and quotations and other specific details for each topic and memorise them. This sort of detail, well used, can give answers a terrific lift.

Different people’s memories seem to work in different ways, so I’m not going to tell you how you must go about the learning. Do what works for you, whether it is saying aloud, mind-maps, coloured highlights or whatever.

3. Plan out your time

You should by now have a copy of your exam timetable, and it is essential that you use this to work out when you are going to revise what. If you have French, Biology and History on three consecutive days it will be no use trying to do all your History revision once French and Biology are over. Many people seem to have greater powers of focus and time-management than I have, but I have learned the hard way that it is well worth doing.

4. Keep interested

If you are a conscientious pupil you probably studied the topic well in the first place and revised it carefully for the “Mocks”. Revising all those notes and text-books again can make the whole business insufferably boring.

To combat this I would always include some new, stimulating material in your revision. Do not start reading some weighty tome at page one. However, the following are recommended.

-         Go to a library for an hour, gather round you a stack of relevant books and look up a few relevant pages in each.

-         Look out for books that are collections of essays. Forty years ago Penguin published a collection of AJP Taylor’s book reviews, lectures and so on called “Europe, Grandeur and Decline”. That was ideal for this purpose, on the nineteenth century. There will be equivalents.

-         Those magazines specially produced for history candidates are very good at this point. “History Review”, “New Perspective” and “Modern History Review” are all written for this purpose.

-         Use the internet. You are NOT looking for the labour-saving quick fix. You are planning to use search engines to roam around your topics looking for a few new details and ideas. (BEWARE: Much dedicated revision material is designed to help very weak candidates pass. If you are a strong candidate hoping for an A, this may do you more harm than good.)

5. Work with a friend

If you can find a like-minded friend for some joint revision sessions, this can be invaluable. Where you know more than they do, it helps your get your ideas in order to explain it to them. Where they know more than you, their points may be really useful. To give purpose to such sessions I suggest using past paper questions as the basis for discussion.

If these sessions turn out to be waste of time, or merely work you both into a panic, abandon them!

That’s quite enough. There is no short-cut. Above all, practice.

6. Build in some relaxing, leisure time.

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If you find this post useful you might like the pieces I have written for Kindle that cover various popular exam topics. I guess they fit under sub-heading 4, above. I’m afraid you have to pay for them but they are only about a pound each in the UK.

There is a list of them all here:

http://georgehharris.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/a-bibliographical-commercial-break.html

More history essay-writing advice: thinking about the title

This post is supposed to follow on from my one last month called “Basic history essay-writing advice”. It is slightly less basic.

How often have you heard (or said, if you are a teacher ) “You must think about the question.” I had been teaching for many years before I realised that, by itself, this was not a very helpful instruction. So I examined the problem and came up with the following very specific thoughts that one ought to have about essay questions.

In an exam time is short, so it is worth practising these thought processes as a drill during revision, so that no time is wasted when it comes to the real thing.

Here are four example titles, taken from recent exam papers. I shall refer to these in what follows.

Title A: OCR AS History

“The military strength of the Normans was the most important reason for their victory at Hastings” How far do you agree?

Title B: OCR A2 History

How effectively did states react to the demands of war in the period from 1792 to 1945?

Title C: SQA Advanced Higher History

What factors best explain Robert the Bruce’s decision to seize the throne in 1306?

Title D: SQA Higher History

To what extent did the Liberal Government of 1906–1914 introduce social reform due

to the social surveys of Booth and Rowntree?

1.                  What's the topic? This almost too easy to bother with – but get it wrong and your essay could get no marks at all.  Write about the Second World War instead of the First World War, Thomas Cromwell instead of Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon I instead of Napoleon III and you are in big trouble. Essay titles often contain dates, and material outside those dates is irrelevant. For example, in an essay about the development of democracy between 1880 and 1914, material about the 1867 Act or the 1918 Act will do the essay little good.

For example: Title A is only about the victory at Hastings. Stuff about the subsequent conquest of the whole country is off the topic an will get nul points.

Title B; No problems in this case. Those dates are in the syllabus, so you wont be tempted to go outside them.

Title C: Again no problem. You are unlikely to write about a different King Robert.

Title D: is only about the social reforms. Explaining why the political reforms were introduced will damage your essay.

2.                  What's the focus? Every examiner knows that writing down memorised facts about the topic instead of sticking to the focus of the question is one of the two commonest ways of under-performing in history exams. (The other is running out of time through lack of self-discipline and a failure to look at the clock.)

For example:

Title A: Candidates will know lots and lots about William of Normandy, about the reasons for the invasion, about the consequences of Hastings, and so on. But stick to the focus – the reasons for the Norman victory in that one battle.

Title C has a fairly narrow focus – the reasons why Bruce decided to seize the throne in 1306.

Title D is only about the reasons for the reforms. You will have been taught about the content and the consequences of the reforms, but those are not the focus of this essay.

3.                  What type of question is it? In practice there are a very limited number of question-types in use. You should have thought about, and practised, all of them before the exam.

Title A: A view is provided and you are asked whether you agree. The obvious structure is an essay in two parts. Part one examines the reasons for thinking the view is correct. Part 2 examines the reason for thinking the view is incorrect. The conclusion weighs up the arguments. (Note I have said “examines” not “describes”. The best essays are always evaluating and analysing as they go, not merely listing points.

Title B: Superficially a more complex instruction, as befits a more advanced exam. In fact this is another 2-part structure. Weigh up reasons for thinking reactions were effective against reasons for thinking reactions were not effective.

Title C: Many essay questions, like this one, look at first as though all you have to do is regurgitate your notes on the reasons why Bruce decided to seize the throne. Beware! All through the essay you must be evaluating the possible reasons so as to prioritise them. A last main paragraph beginning “However, the most important reason Bruce decided to seize the throne was….” seems indicated.

Title D: This is called an “isolated factor” question in the trade. What you have to do is weigh up the reason you are given against all the other possible reasons. Your conclusion, after all this analysis, must be either “Completely”, “Largely”, “Quite a lot”, Not very much”, or “Not at all”.

4.                  Hmm. It depends what you mean by....” This is often where the A-grade historians leap ahead of their rivals. Some titles are so straightforward that no thought about definition is required, but more often or not an essay can be made or marred by such thought. If the title contains the word “Socialism” and you write as though this merely means “trying to be sympathetic to the poor”, your essay will be feeble. A question about whether or not the British people benefited from the domestic reforms of the Liberal Government 1906-1914 will be much better is you pause to think what “British people” and “benefit” might mean.

Title A: Military strength: This includes strategy, tactics, leadership, logistics, weaponry, command structures, organisation, reconnaissance, intelligence… If all you writer about is men on horses against men with axes your essay will be feeble.

Title B: These A2 synoptic essays almost always require this kind of subtle thought. In this case, what do you mean by a states effective reaction to the demands of war? It can be helpful in these cases to run through a quick check list: Economic? Political? Cultural? Ideological? Bureaucratic? Financial? Other? In this case there is far, far more to be said than can be dealt with in 50 minutes. Fortunately the examiners won’t expect you to cover everything, but rather to show that you could if you had time.

Title C; In this case you probably do not need to spend long on this particular thought. But even so a, little thought about how eminent medieval warrior-earls made decisions might help. The main point is that you should always be thinking, not merely remembering.

Title D: This also is straightforward, assuming you have already identified social, as opposed to other sorts of reform. But do apply the “depends what you mean by” test briefly, if only to assure yourself that in this case it is not needed.

5.                  Do I know any authorities worth using in the essay? In A2 and Advanced Higher essays the reference to and evaluation of historians' judgements is often obligatory: study the published mark schemes. At AS and Higher it is an option, only worth taking if there is something worth saying. Evaluating and balancing these arguments – with the names of historians if you know them – will add a good deal of value to your essay. Merely sticking in quotations from historians as though they proved something, tends to weaken an essay. You will not be an A-grade historian if you use secondary quotations from modern historians as though they are evidence.

I repeat, you should in this matter follow closely the instructions of the exam board. However, in general history is a debate, not a list of memorised truths, and if you can join intelligently an existing debate, so much the better.

6.                  Why is this an interesting question? You probably chose the essay because you thought it was easy, because you knew about it. But your essay will stand out from the crowd if you can write it as though it were genuinely interesting and worthwhile. This can be especially useful for giving your conclusion an extra lift.

Title A: This whole idea of why some battles are won and some lost is interesting. Napoleon liked to appoint generals who were “lucky”, and he knew a lot about warfare. Were men on horses with pointy sticks really stronger than those housecarls in the shield wall?

Title B: Well, France went from world-beater to invaded. Germany seemed to have the answers – but then was overwhelmed. Britain buried her head in the sand and hoped for the best. These are deliberately thought-provoking sentences, but that is what the best essays have, thought as well as memory.

Title C:  the decision-making process is fascinating. How are these key decisions arrived at? What does the evidence tell us about this man Bruce, and why he behaved as he did?

Title D: There’s a massive debate going on in the country right now about the right way to tackle problems of poverty. Relate Lloyd George and co to that to fond interest.

Good essays can be fine pieces of literature, genuinely works of art. but these are built on a solid foundation of method and practice. The moments of genius that great athletes show are added on to their mastery of the basics, not a substitute for them.

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If you think my blog-posts are helpful you might find my short revision pieces on Kindle helpful too. I’m afraid you have to pay for those, but only 0.88p (in the UK).

There’s a list of them here: http://georgehharris.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/a-bibliographical-commercial-break.html

For World Book Day: My Childhood Reading

Most adults talk of the books children ought to read. Teachers (and I was one) have an obligation to do this. However, in this post I am going to talk of the books that, according to my memory, I loved as a child.

The first “proper” book I read for myself was “Five on a Hike Together”. I was six. My sister had just been ill and someone had given it to her. I soon followed that with most of the other Famous Five books. You can say what you like about Enid Blyton, and some of what you say is probably true, but she certainly encouraged my generation to read a lot. I was particularly attracted to those of her adventure stories that were set in the country – the Famous Five, as I have said. Also those “…of Adventure” books. Was it the “Island of Adventure” that involved bird-watching on one of the Western or Northern Isles. I remember when I was maybe seven or eight getting “The Mountain of Adventure” out of Coniston Public Library, finishing it soon after lunch and then immediately turning to Page 1 and beginning it again.

I have always re-read novels that I like. I read fiction then and now partly for escape. (After all, I am a historian. I get quite enough gritty realism from history, for goodness sake.) So stories with characters I enjoy spending time with, in places that I like to visit, have always attracted me. The fact that I know the plot and become increasingly familiar with the dialogue does not reduce my pleasure in the book. Most of the children’s books on this list are ones I have read again and again, and many of them I rediscovered when reading them to my own children.

At my little infant school any one whose birthday it was could choose the story for the day, which would be read aloud. On my seventh birthday I chose the chapter “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” from “The Wind in the Willows”. It is left out of most adaptations because it has nothing to do with the Mr Toad plot. It describes how Mole and Rat spend a night on the River searching for the baby otter, Little Portly, and are bewitched by the god Pan. “The Wind in the Willows”, of course, is one of those books like “Treasure Island” and “Kidnapped” where it is hard to remember when one read the full and unabridged version, rather than a Ladybird book, or some other highly illustrated and much cut setting.

My parents’ cottage in the Lake District (advertised by the seller as “derelict outbuildings”) had no floor in places, only one cold tap and no electricity. Naturally reading was one of the main activities. The books of my infancy are still on the shelves there: “Rupert” (two big volumes) “Uncle Mac’s Children’s Hour Stories” some of which are very good indeed. Who could be without “Odds Bobs and Mackerel and the Pirates”?

When I was eight I was given a school prize (boast boast) and it was a version of the King Arthur stories: “King Arthur and the Round Table” by A M Hadfield. It followed (I discovered later) Mallory’s extended tragedy fairly closely, and was a pretty meaty book for a young child. By the time o was nine I pretty well knew it by heart, and it illuminated many of my dreams and fantasies. There were two of R J Unstead’s books around as well “Looking at History” and “People in History”. The first was social history, wonderfully illustrated. The second a series of biographies, from Caractacus to Alexander Fleming. I was given it when I was nine and knew it all by heart by the time I was ten. My future career was pretty well decided.

My parents were devoted to the Lake District – a devotion they have passed on to me and which I have never regretted. Naturally the works of Beatrix Potter were all around when we were little. Now that I am old enough to tell, I can see that her greatness is only partly based on the famous pictures. She was also a master of elegant, precise and beautifully crafted prose. Incidentally, I have heard knaves and fools describe “The Fairy Caravan” as less good than her famous little books. They are wrong. It is superb.

Many of the various Swallows and Amazons books are set in the Lake District as well. Between the ages of eight and eleven I read them again and again. “Pigeon Post” was a special favourite, and I do not think any children’s book has a more exciting climax and a more astonishing twist in the final chapter. Talking of knaves and fools, I have heard it said that they are bad books because they are “dated” and “middle class”. Well, of course they are dated. So is “Pride and Prejudice”. As for being “middle class” – well, what sort of half-baked neo-Marxist literary criticism is that supposed to be? One could hardly expect a children’s book to have members of all social classes included, from decayed gentry to lumpen. As a matter of fact one of the remarkable things about the books is the way that the different middle class families – children of naval officers, rentiers and academics – are subtly differentiated. Arthur Ransome himself was a left-leaning journalist, and he was sensitive to this “middle class” criticism, which is why the chief characters in “The Big Six” are the children of skilled workers. It was when re-reading the whole series to my own children that I discovered what good books they are. Incidentally, they are pretty advanced in attitudes. I think it was Jonathan Porrit who said he first learned his environmental awareness from “Coot Club”, and as for gender equality – well don’t tell Nancy Blackett that girls are not “equal” In fact there are some even better gender equality moments, such as when John falls asleep, after they have drifted into the North Sea in a storm, and Susan steers the ship without waking him. Or in “Secret Water”, when Roger and Titty are racing the Amazons and Roger asks Titty to taken the helm for “ she was the better steersman and he knew it.” This is all in the 1930s.

At my prep school there were lots of good old adventure stories, many of which left little impression. “Tintin” was a joy, of course. Biggles was never a special favourite of mine except for two which I was given “Biggles 'fails to return' ” and “Biggles delivers the goods”. They are Second World War stories, not the unreadably “incorrect” imperial ones of the ‘20s and ‘30s. They certainly boosted my fund of general knowledge. With an older sister fairly close in age we acquired a good few of books as presents. “Dr Dolittle’s Puddleby Adventures”, William Mayne’s choir school books and some Rosemary Sutcliff. Her “Shield Ring” was a special favourite, with its Lake District setting, and I can now see that it is quite a tough story of love and rivalry in a desperate war-zone. Of Cynthia Harnett’s books I specially liked “The Load of Unicorn”. As for her forgotten classic “Sandhoppers”, it can bring tears to the eyes. I was given “The Silver Sword” by Ian Seraillier at about the same time. Oh, and “A Hundred Million Francs”, and “The Otterbury Incident”.

When I was about nine John Masefield’s “The Midnight Folk” was serialised on the BBC Home Service “Children’s Hour”. I was gripped by it, later acquired the book, and still think it is very fine. I suppose it is a book for children who like history, with which it is packed. I wonder if this was before, or after, someone gave my sister “Three Men in A Boat” and we hooted with laughter as our mother read it to us at bed time. It is with this period that I associate the “Just So Stories”, too.

Meanwhile at school we had an English teacher, Mr Packwood, who used to read aloud to us a lot. He had old fashioned tastes, as befitted a man who still had a 1918 bullet in his wrist (a ricochet from a training exercise). From him I learned to enjoy Jack London, W W Jacobs, and above all those Conan Doyle stories that are NOT about Sherlock Holmes. Who now knows “The Missing Special” or “The Croxley Master”?

We did not own a television when I was small, but my father used occasionally to hire one if he thought the summer Test Cricket series was going to be worth watching (1956 and 1959, for sure). In those days there used to be a classic story serialised for children on Sunday afternoons, before Richard Green in “Robin Hood”. One that caught my imagination then was “Huntingtower” by John Buchan. It isn’t a children’s book at all, but a very fine comedy thriller, but that children’s version opened up fresh avenues of escapist reading. (Did I make it clear at the start that I refuse to regard escapism in fiction as a bad thing?). Another serialisation was “Kidnapped” again not particularly a children’s book. Robert Louis Stevenson says something somewhere about writing for the boy who is half a man and the man who is half a boy. And so around the ages of eleven and twelve there was more and more Hornblower, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Richard Hannay, and childhood reading was technically over. But escaping to the country was still important. I’ve still got my copy of “My Family and other Animals” given me for my twelfth birthday. 

Basic history essay-writing advice

Every exam board publishes its mark schemes on-line. The candidate who wants to do well should study those mark schemes, because different exam boards do give slightly different weight to the different things that make up an essay. Some boards have special extra ingredients, such as the SQA requirement at Advanced Higher that there should be explicit references to historiography. Your teachers should have made you aware of these things.

Nevertheless, a good essay is a good essay is a good essay, and some general points can be made with confidence. Incidentally, as well as marking hundreds of essays and attending training days for teachers I have even worked for two exam boards and even at one time set papers and helped write marking criteria, so my advice is based on knowledge and experience.

After years of discussion with my good friend the Head of English we discovered that writing a good English Lit. essay does not necessarily involve quite the same approaches. This advice is about history essays.

Every good history essay should have the following ingredients.

I used to draw this on the board. Pupils seemed to find it helpful

1. Relevance. It must answer the specific question and nothing else. You will never be asked “Write an essay about the Crusades”. You will be asked something specific like “To what extent were the Crusades the result of religious enthusiasm?” Everything in the essay should be directed to answering that question. Bad essays only tackle the question in the last paragraph. In a good essay every paragraph makes a directly relevant contribution to the argument.

It is not a bad idea to have a sentence in each paragraph that echoes closely the wording of the title. eg “Another reason for thinking that there was a lot more to the Crusades than religious enthusiasm is….”  This should ensure that your essay is kept on message.

2. Structure. Good essays have a planned structure. A chronological structure can occasionally work with some questions, but usually it is best avoided. One thing that is definitely wrong is telling the story. Summarising the story from memory in your own words is junior school stuff. Examiners know you know the story. They want you to answer a question about it. Most pupils can write about 900 words in 45 minutes, so 3 or 4 paragraphs apart from the introduction and conclusion [see below] usually works. Each paragraph should make one big argumentative point, and the points should be arranged in order so that they lead convincingly to your conclusion.  

3. Introduction and Conclusion Some examination boards have found essays so damaged by poor quality introductions, and then running out of time at the end, that they advise leaving out the introduction. Nevertheless, good introductions make better essays. A good introduction should NOT introduce the topic (eg The Crusades) but should introduce your argument (the extent to which the Crusades were caused by religious enthusiasm) and should show where your argument is going. A good conclusion should sum up your answer clearly, and the main reasons why you have arrived at that conclusion rather than a different one. Good introductions and conclusions should add value to an essay, not be there merely because you have been told they should be there. Make sure you leave time to write a substantial conclusion that adds value. “Thus we see that the Crusades were partly caused by religious enthusiasm, but there were other causes as well” adds no value at all.

4. Substance Some examiners would put this at the top of the list. Of course it is important. In a good essay every argumentative point will be supported by some evidence. Distinguish between extra detail that does not actually help answer the question and telling detail that really gives weight to relevant points. The first is better than nothing; at least it shows you know something of the topic. But it is the second sort that really lifts an essay. Quotations, statistics, incidents that help prove your points are the things to aim for. There should be lots of real history in your essays.

5. Clear English This is not much to do with spelling and punctuation as such, though these should be as good as possible. It is all to do with word-choice, sentence structure and generally making sure that the words you use say clearly what you mean. Just for starters – never say “government” when you mean “parliament”.

Here are a few examples of common faults:

·        Using exclusive superlatives when they are not what you mean, and not true. Words like “only”, “first” and “greatest” allow no compromise and should be used with care.

·        Using words like “thus” and “therefore” when you cannot in fact make a logical inference. If the case is not watertight say: “this suggests that” or something like that.

·        Writing sentences that are far too long, with too many subordinate clauses, and that eventually run out of control.    

·        Leaving out a step in the argument because it is clear in your mind when it will not be clear to the reader unless it is put down on paper.

·        Writing two sentences that contradict each other.

All of these things can be done poorly, quite well, or very well; but if you do them all competently you should get a decent grade. Good luck.

The Content of a Secondary School History Course Part 2: Pre-exam Years

In Part One of this blog I examined some of the problems that face anyone who is trying to devise a History curriculum. In particular I argued that the number of topics that can be included is a good deal less than is usually imagined. Most of us (teachers, academics and politicians) who enjoy discussing the subject had an aptitude for History at school and could take in a lot more than the average pupil. We have to be careful not to set up a curriculum that would have been fine for us, but which would lead to far too many pupils finding the subject dull, and giving it up in droves at the first opportunity.

In this post I am going to describe what I did, in terms of content, with my pre-exam years when I was Head of History. There is no intention at all of saying what other people should do. There are all sorts of constraints that apply differently in different schools. My hope is that my example may provoke some useful reaction, either of the “I like that; I’ll try it” sort, or of the “That’s dreadful; I must avoid that” sort.

My own situation was as follows. For one thing, I was at a school in Edinburgh. This freed me from the National Curriculum (an English arrangement). For another I naturally wanted to include plenty of Scottish History, but without neglecting the mainstream of UK History. In the third place I was very lucky to have three pre-exam years, not two. We began with Primary 7 (aged 10-11). During these three years the time allocated to me was three 40 minute lessons per week, with two short preps. Finally, it was an independent school. We were not very selective in terms of ability, but there was, of course, a considerable financial commitment to the idea that education was worthwhile. Also, I had enormous freedom, provided my bosses could be persuaded I was doing a good job. I look back and realise I was very lucky in the Heads and Deputy Heads I worked under.

[Let’s not get into debate about the rights and wrongs of these arrangements for the moment. These were matters of whole-school policy. Also, and this is a matter for another post, I had a list of eight “Strands” (skills, more or less) pinned up on the wall of the departmental room, and reminded colleagues frequently that it was just as important to develop and deliver these as it was to instill knowledge of any particular topic. However, back to Content.]

Some time in the 1980s the mandarins of Scottish education produced something called the 5-14 Scheme. I was in the happy position of being able to pick and choose the best bits. The HMIs in those days (no Ofsted in Scotland) had wide experience of good practice in schools and used this to put together a guide to good practice. That was where I got the “Strands” from (though I added two of my own: Extended Reading and Extended Writing, which found favour with the Inspectors when they called). As far as Content was concerned I found their advice excellent.

In each of the pre-exam years children should do something local, something Scottish, something British something European and something beyond Europe.

In Primary 7 we did the Middle Ages. Our course included: David I and the founding of Edinburgh; the peoples of Scotland before 1000AD; the Wars of Independence; The Norman Conquest; The Anglo-Saxons (and remember that Edinburgh was for a long time in the Angle Kingdom of Northumbria); the Vikings; Henry II and Becket; Monasteries; Castles; Burghs; the Crusades. It was very much up to individual teachers to choose which topics to develop, which topics to whizz through, how to handle the occasional project, piece of extended writing, document exercise or whatever. I used to spend a lot of time on David I, whose reign (as Scottish historians will know) incorporates most of the topics on the list. I will say a bit more about the Crusades, incidentally, in Part 4 of this blog, which deals with the Hidden Curriculum). We had a great day out in St Andrews’ looking at the Castle and the Cathedral.

In Secondary 1 we did the Long Sixteenth Century. Once upon a time, when we had four lessons a week, we carried the story up to 1660; but there is no point wallowing in myths of a Golden Age. I chose this century partly because there are so many really good stories for the many children of that age who love stories. I also chose it because it gave opportunities for such a variety of types of history – political, military, diplomatic, social, cultural and intellectual. We had a day out exploring the Old Town of Edinburgh.

So. We did: The Old Town of Edinburgh; James IV; Mary Queen of Scots; Elizabethan England; the Renaissance; the Reformation; the Spanish Armada; the Voyages of Discovery. Each of these is, of course, capable of unlimited development. Again I gave my colleagues a good deal of freedom. Personally I spent a long time on the Renaissance and James IV, tackled MQS through controlled research exercises and project work and tried to get them thinking about the impact of the Voyages of Discovery on the world beyond Europe. Incidentally, I found one can never take for granted what children will find interesting. One year I had a class that was gripped by the Reformation. One year only, out of 37, did I find a class that had no interest in my reading to them the story of Mary’s execution, as told by Garret Mattingley. Teachers have to be ready to learn and adapt as they go along.

Secondary 2 was the last year of compulsory History and the first year where most of the pupils were ready to tackle topics with a bit more depth and sophistication and moral ambiguity, and not be given nightmares by the unspeakable violence and cruelty that is found in every period of history. I was desperate to cover some of the things that I thought they ought to know about but the list was, of course, far too long to be accommodated. In the end I settled for three separate units, one per term.

In the Autumn term we did Scotland from the Covenanters to the 1830s. I was sure that every young person growing up in Scotland ought to know something about the Covenanters, the Jacobites, the Treaty of Union, the New Town of Edinburgh, the Scottish Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution. In practice one so often got bogged down in the Jacobite story that other things got short shrift. But one kept trying. Text books were a real problem. Every time I found one that was good enough it promptly went out of print. So in the end I sat down for a week in the school’s Highland Field Centre and dashed off an in-house text-book. After a pilot year it was refined with illustrations and served us fine. I am still quietly proud of my simplified diagram of a Boulton and Watt Steam Engine, drawn from memory.

 In the second term we tackled the First World War. Enough said. We were lucky enough to be able to combine this with a trip to the Ypres Salient, leaving by coach on Thursday evening and returning, sadder and wiser, on Tuesday. We went during the slack weekend after the school rugby season had wound down – February/March – and the bleak weather detracted nothing from the visit. The trip was absolutely outstanding, and I can say this because we did not run it. We placed ourselves in the hands of Des Brogan and Mercat Tours International, and all the pupils, and every member of staff we took (always at least one non-historian) were bowled over by the quality of the experience.

And finally… What on earth to so in the last summer term before half of them say goodbye to the department? We experimented with various twentieth century topics but in the end settled on “Aspects of American History 1918-1980”. This allowed us to look at Boom and Bust; the New Deal; Pearl Harbour and the Japanese War; Civil Rights; and Vietnam. You will appreciate how these topics allowed the pupils to develop their ideas about politics, economics, propaganda, diplomacy, warfare and human rights. You can’t include everything.

We also added, in this final term, a scheme which worked well enough for us to stick with it for a decade. This was to use one of the two preps each week for a news diary. We chose five stories that had to be followed week by week. If there was an election, that was in, of course. Other topics came and went, but the list of five always included China, and Environmental Issues.

So, there you are. If you approach this list looking for great topics that have been left out, you will find dozens. But I still think our pupils had a pretty interesting and worthwhile time in our department.

As a little footnote I will mention two after-school activities. On Tuesday I ran the Junior History Club. What we did depended on who joined that term. Sometimes we did jigsaws of castles, sometimes we looked at videos about Romans. Sometimes we went out of the gates and looked at urban history. On a Thursday I ran the Second World War Activity. This followed a three year cycle (for pupils were juniors for three years). In Year 1 I went through the War chronologically. In Year 2 I dealt with it thematically (army, navy, code-breaking, air and so on) and in Year 3 we watched war-films dove-tailed with discussion or video documentary about how accurate, or not, they were. Some pupils chose to come back for all three years.