Dave on Fire is right, migration is certainly not a modern phenomenon. Humanity began in Africa (probably) and the first immigrants to these isles have been followed by many other groups who sought a new life in our rainy ‘Atlantic archipelago’ (in John Pocock’s phrase). I made it sound as if that was unimportant, and I believe the opposite. My problem with the Education Secretary’s plan is the attempt to use history to mould children’s sense of Britishness. If Alan Johnson had announced that the physics syllabus had been altered in order to teach children “traditional British values” (whatever they may be) people would be shocked. It is acceptable, however, to announce that children will be taught selected elements of the past to push this message.

I left school last year, having learnt about the Second World War (where the British are the plucky good guys) over and over, but never once having a lesson on the British Empire, nor indeed on any country outside of Europe other than the U.S.A. The government’s belated acknowledgement that slavery is an aspect of British history that might be worth teaching is welcome, though even that comes wrapped in this year’s celebration that we were the first European power to ban the slave trade (rather like congratulating a mass murderer for no longer killing people, in my view). The biggest lacuna in the story of British history presented in schools is what British colonisers did abroad. As Sisodia in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses says, “The trouble with the Engenglish is that their hiss-hiss-history happened overseas so they do-do-don’t know what it means.” It will not teach any child the values the government would like them to have, but if that is the point of history then they may as well make it up entirely.

Filed under: education on February 7th, 2007