Mr Read 'How Not To Teach' and 'I 8 Skool'

'BEST EVER!' 'OUTSTANDING!', 'BIGGEST IMPROVEMENT!' As soon as the GCSE results are published the spin doctors employed by local councils put a positive gloss on them. Due to high stakes testing and league tables some schools have dropped more 'difficult' subjects like History in favour of 'easier' subjects like Leisure and Tourism. Nationally numbers of pupils taking GCSE History fell from 35.7% in 1997 to 29.9% in 2009.

The lowest figure in the whole country was for Knowsley, only 16 per cent studied History at GCSE and only 4.3% at 'A' Level. No surprise there, everyone knew how under pressure Heads manipulated test results. This is also reflected in other subjects like Modern Foreign Languages.

Just 18% of those eligible for free school meals studied History compared to 32% who don't recieve that benefit.

The stark reality is that some secondary schools promote a wide range of subjects for their children to choose from. In other schools, due to pressure for test results, there is a restrictive, narrow curriculum mainly based on vocational subjects. Reminds me a bit of grammar and secondary modern schools.

Labels: History

# posted by Mr Read @ 12:35 pm 1 comments

I submitted an article to the Historical Association's 'Primary History' magazine. Thanks, but no thanks. It wasn't printed. They don't really want to articulate or organise outright opposition to the marginalisation of history. 'Let's wait. If we oppose everything they won't listen to us'.

I understand their logic, but I fundamentally disagree. What have years of 'compromise' and 'negotiations' achieved? According to a survey in 2006 history accounted for only 4% of teaching time in primary schools. That led to the shabby compromise in the Rose Review where history, geography and RE were subsumed into 'Humanities'

Now Michael Gove is proposing a return to 'our island story', the chanting of Kings and Queens and the mnemonic learning of dates.

There is a time to resist and speak out. Historical examples? Martin Luther King was opposed by the majority of black preachers who refused to join public protests against segregation. 'Deal with it through the courts, you'll only provoke the white backlash'. In his letter from Birmingham Prison in 1963 Martin Luther King noted that, 'This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never''.

The Article

Primary History? Before the General Election the Conservative Education Minister Michael Gove outlined his vision for primary history teaching, ‘most parents would rather their children had a traditional education, with children sitting in rows, learning the kings and queens of England’. Eton Old Boy David Cameron commented, ‘It is a tragedy that we have swept away the teaching of narrative history and replaced it with a bite-sized disjointed approach to learning about historical events… [a] shift away from learning actual knowledge, such as facts and dates.’

What is the current state of primary history teaching, is there a crisis, are the barbarians at the gates? In 2006 research by Manchester University revealed that only 4% of curriculum time was devoted to teaching history, whereas English consumed 26.7%, Maths 21.9% and Science 9.7% and with ICT now a core subject they will account for the majority of teaching time. Then you have to factor in that MFL will become compulsory in Key Stage 2 by 2014 and there is an expectation that children will receive at least two hours of ‘quality PE teaching’ every week.

The primary curriculum has been straining to squeeze the proverbial imperial quart into a pint pot. Over the past few years a consensus has emerged that change is necessary. The government’s response was to commission Jim Rose to review the primary curriculum. One golden rule for any official inquiry is to choose a pliable chairman or investigator (see the Hutton Inquiry for more details) and as the quintessential ‘safe pair of hands’ government trusty Jim Rose fitted the bill. Second golden rule is to frame the terms of reference so tightly that nothing controversial will emerge. The Rose Review of the curriculum didn’t consider the effect of the National Strategies on curriculum time, or pressure from testing or league tables. In other words the elephant wedged in the classroom blocking out every ray of sunlight was ignored, Wittgenstein would have been proud.

The Cambridge Primary Review team conducted a far more authoritative and thorough inquiry, they concluded after interviewing hundreds of teachers, parents and children that the primary curriculum was narrower than in Victorian times. Sadly the national debate was confined to one week, the government set the tone by immediately rubbishing the findings within hours of its publication, this from a government minister who admitted that he hadn’t even read the full report.

The Rose Review was forced to concede that topic based teaching would have to replace the subject discrete curriculum. Humanities would encompass history, geography and religious education. Despite the fact that curriculum reform was excluded from the Education Bill in the parliamentary ‘wash out’ (all contentious issues were withdrawn) some primary schools are already experimenting with a creative curriculum.

My fear is that if the domination of maths and English are not contested, if the testing regime remains then history will continue to be marginalized. Is there also a danger that Humanities will be taught inadequately, without any thoroughness or rigour? Will it be squeezed in at the end of an afternoon? What training, if any, will teachers receive on topic-based teaching? Is this destined to be another ‘initiative’ that fails because teachers are chained down by assessment, marking and target setting?

Primary history teaching is not on the endangered species list – yet. You can’t say the same about history in secondary schools. There was the sobering and altogether alarming research by the Historical Association –

* Last year only 30% of students took GCSE history, down from 40% in 1995

* In 2006 1,479 out of 3,500 state secondary schools didn’t enter a single candidate for GCSE history

*97% of independent and 94% of grammar schools taught history as a discrete subject compared to 72% of comprehensives and only 59% of academies.

How will this lack of basic knowledge, of historical ignorance and cultural relativism manifest itself? This may be purely anecdotal and unscientific, but I believe it is part of a worrying trend, I’ve observed it at first hand, because over the past year I’ve taught history to trainee primary teachers. One exercise with the first years is to ask them to put different eras in chronological order, so who invaded first – the Romans or the Vikings? Only a gap of eight centuries. The Celts, who were they? Dates or key events, Magna Carta, the Wars of the Roses, the Civil War? Blank faces all round.

I’m not suggesting a return to Michael Gove’s rote learning of dates and kings and queens (although an overall sense of chronology does need to be taught). That method of teaching was dull, stodgy and boring, the patrician view of history, elitist and patriarchal. Where there is time teachers use evidence as a teaching tool, contrasts between rich and poor are studied, students question different interpretations and investigate cause and effect.

So how to address trainee teachers’ lack of subject knowledge? Where I teach subjects are split into two hour sessions, in Year 1 there are three for history, the second year two and three in Year 3. It ticks the box in the Teaching Development Agency’s huge list of competencies but little else. Does it really prepare them in any way shape or form to teach the subject? Or is it a case for being grateful for small mercies? On some PGCE courses training consists of one afternoon on Humanities. I’m also aware, however, that Initial Teacher Training has also been standardised, monitored, scrutinised, homogenised and has to conform to the National Strategies, Ofsted inspections and death by targets.

Does my university have a History Department? There is a cupboard with some outdated resources, but the lecturers don’t meet, revise material, make links with schools and conduct research and I’d be interested to compare with other institutions, are they also dependent on part time, casual, untrained staff?

So once our students make it into schools and metamorphose into teachers what fate awaits them? In the days of the old Local Education Authorities (LEAs) there were subject advisers who arranged courses, visited schools and organised resources in teachers’ centres. History teachers from schools actually met together and produced resources, reports and there are yellowing copies of books with collections of essays on the shelves of university libraries. About fifteen years ago as the pressure from league tables intensified the post of subject adviser became redundant. School Improvement Officers replaced them with their monotheism – there is but one God, test results.

If local authorities became a scorched earth zone in some schools the last of the true believers maintained the faith and pockets of good practise and inspiring teaching remained. They were the old history co-ordinators who encouraged new teachers, fought for their subject and tried to protect it from the ravages of testing, targets and levelling. Under the terms of the ‘Workforce Remodelling Agreement’ the post of co-ordinator was scrapped in its place the ‘Subject Leader’, where the aim was ‘driving up standards’, a managerial role involving observations of other teachers and target setting. Theoretically this new post carries with it a Teaching and Learning Responsibility (TLR) payment. In the real world of primary teaching most schools don’t have the money for TLRs, therefore in many schools teachers refuse to shoulder the burden of ‘Subject Leader’ and senior managers are forced to oversee the entire curriculum.

Is this just superficial, anecdotal? Undoubtedly there are still outstanding examples of history teaching, but is it in any way consistent, widespread or extensive? Maybe a dose of realism is better than starry-eyed Panglossian optimism. I don’t want to diminish or traduce the role that ‘Primary History’ has played; it has kept the eternal flame burning. But to what extent is the Editorial Committee talking to the Editorial Committee? The last four issues contained sixty-six articles – only twelve were by primary teachers.

Crisis is an overused word, but if you examine history teaching and its status in teacher training institutions, local authorities and schools it is apposite. History leads this underground existence in education, tolerated but not celebrated, frequently ignored and marginalized. Are the barbarians at the gates? No, they’ve broken in and sacked the library.

Labels: History

# posted by Mr Read @ 4:39 pm 1 comments

The campaign for ‘real’ history teaching in schools? The Education Minister Michael Gove believes that ‘most parents would rather their children had a traditional education, with children sitting in rows, learning the kings and queens of England’.

Spotting a potential gap in the market, Stacey International have republished the 1937 editions of ‘A History of England’ by EH Carter, Chief Inspector of Schools and RAF Mears, who taught history at Warwick School between 1923 and 1933 (the Tudors and Stuarts are published in April 2010). The series has been edited and revised by David Evans, the former head of history at Eton College.

The publicity material promises a ‘straight-forward chronological narrative’ in ‘fast-paced muscular prose’. The series is aimed at, ‘everybody who seeks properly to understand our collective story and to look beyond the random selection and often contentious teaching that have long dominated the curricula’.

The blurb contains an approving quote from Eton Old Boy David Cameron, ‘It is a tragedy that we have swept away the teaching of narrative history and replaced it with a bite-sized disjointed approach to learning about historical events… [a] shift away from learning actual knowledge, such as facts and dates.’

History is undeniably a narrative and you need an awareness of chronology in order to arrange the story into some kind of order. I know from teaching young adults that many of them have a shocking inability to place different eras into order – Victorian, Stuart, Tudor, Viking, Norman, Saxon, Celtic and Roman. Is there a danger that we could become as dim as some American youngsters – ‘The Second World War started when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour’?

Where might a lack of awareness about dates and chronology stem from? You could argue that history teaching; any history teaching would be an advantage.

Research conducted by Manchester University showed that only 4% of curriculum time in primary schools was devoted to teaching history. The dominant subjects were, unsurprisingly, Maths, English and Science – the subjects that are tested and therefore contribute to school league tables. According to research by Professor John MacBeath 98% of Ofsted gradings for schools directly correlate to their test scores.

In secondary schools the picture doesn’t improve. Last year only 30% of students took GCSE history, down from 40% in 1995. Is this because pupils don’t like history? A Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) report in 2007 quoted a survey of 1,700 children, two thirds of whom gave up history at 14, although half liked the subject and rated their teachers. Even Ofsted found that 70% of history lessons are good or outstanding.

One of the main reasons for the marginalisation of history GCSE is pressure from ‘easier’ vocational subjects like media or business studies and PE. Some schools force students to choose a ‘pathway’ at 14 – either vocational or academic. Even if a student wants to study history there will not be space in the timetable to accommodate them. Again there is the pressure for schools to get results, a vocational Btec is worth 4 GCSEs and will count towards that all important benchmark of 5 A-C GCSEs.

In 2006 1,479 out of 3,500 state secondary schools didn’t enter a single candidate for GCSE history. A survey by the Historical Association points to a wide disparity in history teaching – 97% of independent and 94% of grammar schools teach history as a discrete subject compared to 72% of comprehensives and only 59% of academies. Increasingly history is taught as part of humanities or in cross-curricular programmes.

This process is reflected in other subjects, in 2004 schools were allowed to drop the teaching of modern foreign languages (MFL) for pupils after the age of 14, this has subsequently lead to a precipitous fall in the numbers of GCSE candidates. Last year 60% of undergraduates on MFL courses were privately educated.

The campaign for ‘real’ history teaching chimes with the pressure for ‘tried and tested’ teaching methods, yes, those halcyon days of the 11 plus, expensive uniforms, children sitting in rows, rote learning, setting, streaming and ‘back to basics’. The exponents of this comfort blanket neglect to mention that half of children left school without any qualifications and that university education was restricted to a narrow elite. As for private schools there was the legacy of corporal punishment by prefects, compulsory games, rote learning of classics (to the exclusion of other subjects), bullying, cold showers and fagging.

Dates? You do need some knowledge to access the sweep of history – my key dates include the Peasants Revolt (‘serfs ye are and serfs ye will remain’) 1381; the Battle of Bosworth (‘my horse, my horse my kingdom for a horse) 1485; the Spanish Armada (‘I may have the body of a weak and feeble women, but I have the heart and stomach of a king’) 1588 and the ‘Glorious’ Revolution of 1688 that consolidated the Protestant succession. I can use those key events to navigate through the historical record. Many primary classrooms and all secondary school history classrooms will display timelines with key dates to support pupils’ knowledge.

However, what the traditionalists want is a return to those days of yore when didactic instructional teaching ruled in the classroom. In primary schools that took the form of rote learning, the memorising and testing of dates and kings and queens – a handy chart was on the wall next to that map of the Empire (British colonies in pink) on which the sun never set.

Predictably the main cheerleader for ‘real’ history teaching is Prince Charles, in pursuit of this aim he has organised summers schools for history teachers. I’ve never attended but his other projects have included lectures on reducing one’s carbon footprint (despite personal use of private jets and gas guzzling limousines). I have to confess that I’m at one with Tom Paine who protested against hereditary heads of state as archaic and irrelevant as hereditary artists, mathematicians, musicians or indeed historians.

Stacey International is obviously trying to ride the wave by republishing Carter and Mears’ ‘A History of Britain’. It might be of passing interest to dedicated historians, there is an in-depth analysis of the Treaty of Utrecht. However, in essence it is the Old Fogies view of history, the sort of little England ‘our island story’ that was taught in the 1920s, the viewpoint that inspired the newspaper headline, ‘Fog in the Channel – Continent Isolated’.

The book is an example of the ‘kings and queens’ method of teaching history, written in an ‘impartial’ style, so to shamelessly dumb down when it comes to the Civil War, Charles I was ineffectual but then the Puritans were strait-laced killjoys.

In modern history teaching children read accounts, diaries and letters from the time, which help them to understand and empathise with the protagonists. This might include studying events like the Putney Debates where issues like extending the voting franchise were discussed, or reading about different viewpoints and interpretations.

How did ordinary people live? What about the contrast between rich and poor? You won’t really find it in Carter and Mears. As for the role of women in society, the ‘muscular prose’ doesn’t really extend beyond the six wives of Henry VIII, ‘Bloody’ Mary and Good Queen Bess.

The books are outmoded, outdated and antediluvian. Sadly if Michael Gove has his way this type of dry, stodgy, elitist history teaching will become the norm.

Where teachers are allowed the time history is taught through skills and enquiry, processes, concepts and interpretations. Students will be challenged to compare and contrast, sift conflicting evidence and question it for reliability and bias. They will be expected to analyses causes and consequences and try to empathise with people, form all sections of society, who lived in the past.

Another strength of history in primary schools is teaching about ancient civilisations – Greece, Rome, Egypt, the Incas, Benin and in secondary schools English-centric teaching has been replaced by a wider awareness of international events, although there has been an over emphasis on Hitler and the Nazis.

In a multi-racial, multi-cultural society a move back to ‘real’ history teaching would be reactionary and regressive. The Carter Mears series belong on the shelves of second hand bookshops to be viewed as historical curiosities. ‘Real’ history teaching? It was usually delivered by those older male teachers wearing chalk-dusted corduroy jackets with patches sewn on the elbow, droning on in stuffy classrooms as children laboured away for hours, taking notes at hurricane speed, in dread of the inevitable test at the end of the week.

Labels: History

# posted by Mr Read @ 9:55 am 0 comments