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The irony of it

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About a week ago I was lucky enough to spend four days in Tbilisi Georgia, as a part of an amazing Euroclio project: Innovating History Teaching in the Black Sea region.

It was an incredible experience and a brilliant project, aimed at getting history educators from across the region to share history teaching ideas on culture and multiple perspectives, so they can become more tolerant of each other.

Educators from Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan all worked together in harmony. Pretty impressive because some of these countries are war with each other!

It is a brilliant project which keeps teaching history as a discipline as its central thrust . It’s aims are the same as the true heroes in English history teaching: SHP:

  • To get children and young people to become curious, to develop their own opinions and values based on a respect for evidence, and to build a deeper understanding of the present by engaging with and questioning the past.

Where is the irony in all of this you may ask? This is indeed noble work.

Well, carry on reading and you may spot it….

Across the region history is one of, if not the most important subject in the curriculum. It has traditionally been taught in the old Soviet brainwashing style: as facts to be remembered and regurgitated about each countries individual national story.

The pedagogical approach is too often that of remembering carefully selected official information. The more information kids can cram in their heads the better the marks they get in exams, the better they do, the better the job they will get.

The teacher tells the kids what to know – that the people and their country  are great. There is no room for questioning the value of the evidence presented nor for allowing kids to form their own judgements or look at things from different perspectives. The exam system is based on remembering facts and there is little motivation to teach history as a discipline.

All the people I met want to try and change this. They are creating lesson plans and resources to share that attempt to teach history from different perspectives, that engage with evidence and help children work as real historians.

The great and inspiring people involved  look to the West and to England in particular as the place to learn from. The place where history teaching is truly awe inspiring…all the stuff we take for granted they want their history teachers to be able to do (our principles for enquiry).They would give their right arm for a publication like Teaching History!

Spotted the irony?

Here is a group of dedicated people who are trying their hardest to overcome some serious barriers and improve the quality of history teaching. They want kids to look at both sides of the argument,  to analyse evidence, to draw their own conclusions, to see how history is constructed.

They want to influence policy makers in their country to change the history curriculum to a more skills based curriculum and  to look at content from different perspectives.
While all of this work is going on in really difficult circumstances, here we are in England with a Minister for Education who appears to want to do the exact opposite!

We have a proposed history curriculum  which values content for content’s sake and values remembering information for its own sake above a real understanding of how history is constructed. In fact the way it has been put on the table appears to be decidedly undemocratic….

Kind of ironic, eh?

Anyway, to end this post I propose a toast,  in respect of Georgian tradition, I raise a glass to Euroclio and all of the wonderful people involved in Innovating History Teaching in the Black Sea region!  You truly are doing an amazing job – one which our policy makers could learn an awful lot from.

Distorted coverage of the debate over the proposed history curriculum on ‘The Moral Maze’

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Last night, radio 4′s The Moral Maze discussed the proposals for the new national curriculum.  Katherine Edwards, a history teacher campaigning against the awful proposals wrote the following response – see below.

Katherine is behind the website historynotpropaganda and instigated the e-petition Keep the History Curriculum Politically Neutral. Please sign this petition if you haven’t done so already.

Here is Katherine’s thoughtful response to last night’s programme:

The debate on the reform of the history curriculum was significantly distorted by yesterday’s ‘Moral Maze’ on BBC Radio 4.  Although some heated exchanges took place, one point on which all participants agreed was that it was not acceptable for the history curriculum to become a vehicle for encouraging patriotism.  This included Chris McGovern, Chairman of The Campaign for Real Education, who was calling for an end to history lessons which ‘denigrate this country’ and Antony Beevor who was defending the government’s approach.

Beevor was in fact very explicit about this, stating that he believed it was ‘absolutely wrong for history to be used as patriotism’.  Yet he claimed ‘I don’t see any patriotism’ in the new curriculum.  Which curriculum has he been reading?  Clearly not the curriculum devised by a department headed by someone who calls for history to ‘celebrate the distinguished role of these islands in the history of the world’ and who spoke in parliament of history lessons which focused on ‘British heroes and heroines’.  Clearly not the curriculum endorsed by the Prime Minister at the Tory Party Conference as ‘our island story in all its glory’.

If he, along with majority of contributors to the programme who failed to bring the issue to light, cannot see the patriotism here, how does he explain why 2045 people have so far signed an e-petition calling to ‘Keep the History Curriculum Politically Neutral’?

You don’t actually have to look hard in the draft document to see it. The concept of the nation state is given such prominence that it is mentioned second only to the simple time-related vocabulary such as ‘before’ and ‘after’ to be taught to five year olds.  The Dutch invasion to depose James II is referred to as the ‘Glorious Revolution’.  Slavery is not mentioned in ‘the development of a modern economy’ section, despite a growing academic consensus that it was of vital importance to this process.  Instead ‘the slave trade and the abolition of slavery’ are mentioned in one breath implying their equal significance.  The draft uses archaic, loaded terminology such as ‘Britain and her Empire’ and the ‘Great Game’ which serious historians have not used for decades.

The political agenda behind the curriculum is also painfully evident in its omissions. The ‘British heroes’ Mr Gove has in mind are predominantly white Protestant male ‘winners’, preferably those carrying a gun.  Ordinary people hardly get a mention; people of African and Asian origin make no appearance in the whole primary curriculum and then only appear either as slaves, or the immigrants of the Windrush generation, or refugees from East Africa.  This conveys the dangerous and erroneous impression that multiculturalism is something new on ‘these islands’.  There are only two women mentioned in the four years of Key Stage 2 history, both Queens.  If what we study in history is a reflection of what matters to us as a society, this sends some very disturbing messages.

Instead of highlighting this, the debate focused on the ‘facts versus skills’ argument, with many voices contending that it was impossible for children to engage in critical analysis before they knew ‘the facts’.  Richard Evans’ position, which has always been that the two should be learnt in tandem, was misrepresented as being a privileging of skills over factual knowledge.  To present the two as mutually exclusive alternatives would be as absurdly reductionist to any history teacher as the suggestion that when learning a language all the vocabulary has to be mastered before any grammar can be taught.

Children are quite capable of understanding that people take different perspectives, and that evidence can be brought to bear in judging between them as anyone who has ever arbitrated in their playground arguments can testify.  As soon as they can read fluently they are quite capable of reading two contrasting sources, suggesting reasons why they differ and trying to adjudicate between them, albeit on a simple level.

In doing so they are engaging with history in an honest and authentic way – in fact the only honest and authentic way – and one which reflects the way the subject works at a much higher level, rather than being duped into thinking that the subject consists of a body of supposedly objective ‘facts’, which no serious historian would contend.  There is nothing that engages young people in the subject more than a good debate, or the empowering sense that they can formulate their own views, as long as they are based on the evidence.  ‘Facts’ and ‘skills’ are actually mutually reinforcing.  They remember the factual material much better as well if they have deployed it in a debate with their peers or their teacher. It not only inspires their interest in history but gives them the instinctively critical approach to evidence which is so valuable as a life skill and so important in maintaining the health of our democracy.

If teachers – those that will deliver the new curriculum – were given a genuine voice in the debate, then it would be put in perspective.  The Historical Association’s survey of teachers show clearly that the teachers are anything but evenly divided between supporters and opponents of the new curriculum.  From over 700 respondents 96% thought the new curriculum over prescriptive; 93% strongly disagree that ‘everything’ from the Stone Age to 1700 should be taught at primary school; 85% disagree that there is an appropriate amount of European and World history; 91% disagree that the new curriculum will ‘effectively prepare young people for life and work in an increasing globalised society’; 90% disagree that the aims of the curriculum can be delivered by its content and only 5% agree that their school will follow the new curriculum in its current form!

Before we take the dramatic step of replacing our current curriculum with a high prescriptive, undeliverable, dangerously politicised narrative, we should at least give the debate proper representation in the national media.

The political agenda behind the new curriculum may be invisible to Antony Beevor, but these current secondary school pupils attending last Monday’s BASA meeting to discuss the threat it poses to multiculturalism are well aware of it.

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Photography © mike@peoplepictures.me

 

 

Katherine Edwards, history teacher

Please sign Katherine’s e-petition Keep the History Curriculum Politically Neutral.

What kind of history do you want?

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I have just been lucky enough to have a look at a copy of Diana Laffin’s latest A level History book British Society 1945.  Its part of the Enquiring History series for A level.Quickly thumbing through it I am struck by the clever teaching techniques and the interesting content. It made me reflect how much progress there has been in teaching over the last 20 or so years. Progress that will be lost if Gove’s proposed history curriculum becomes the National History Curriculum.

Diana’s  focus starts with her own story – complete with photographs and a timeline. The power of the personal used to great effect. Then she dives into the great enquiry question: When, if ever, did Britain become a multi cultural society? Students are asked to make a timeline and look at the how far events can be seen to show Britain as fully multi cultural. They are introduced to interesting topics, asked to think in the grey as well as the black and white and are introduced to concepts such as ‘typicality’ and ‘the qualified conclusion’. Great content and a great enquiry based focus – what more would you want to turn you on to history post 16?

If I remember way back to my A levels. The contrast couldn’t be more striking.  We focused on The Enlightened Despots, The French Revolution and the Congress System….The teacher sat at the front and told us what happened. We didn’t look at different historians views. We made notes then went away to write essays – those who didn’t know how to research and write, did badly. The content wasn’t made to be engaging, clever enquiry questions were a thing of the future, active teaching techniques only meant that the teacher moved from lecturing at her desk to lecturing standing up.

I know which focus and approach is better. I also know the journey that the history teaching community has taken to get to where we are today as I have been lucky enough to have been a part of it. History teaching in England is in a great shape. Youngsters are made think, debate,anaylse and draw conclusions. All of this could be lost if the proposals for the History Curriculum are published in their current form.   At 17 I found the enlightened despots pretty dry – I also struggled with The Enlightenment. I was a history nut – still am.

Gove wants kids to study this dreary stuff:  to look at the English enlightenment, the Congress of Vienna, the Crimean and Boer Wars. He wants kids to focus on his personal version of our Island Story. And he wants them to do this at the age of 11! Diversity is totally lost.  The word enquiry doesn’t seem to appear anywhere in the document. Looking closely  at the KS3 content, it is so dense and arbitrary that it is almost impossible to pick out big stories in an attempt to help kids understand the or any big picture(s).  And the whole notion that history should be taught as a discipline appears to have been screwed up and chucked into some waste paper basket in an office of the DFE

If you care about history – about how kids are taught in schools in the 21st century, please spend half enough responding to the present proposals. Click here to respond the consultation before the 16th April.

If you need some guidance or ideas to help you a good first port of call is the Historical Association’s website. They put forward a good case.

Please respond to the proposed changes to National Curriculum for History

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If like me you are still spitting feathers over the history proposals then we need to make sure that we respond to the consultation in the correct manner. Time is quickly ticking away.

I heard a sneaky rumour that those people at the DFE (not politicians,  the civil servants) are monitoring the responses very carefully. Unsurprisingly the changes to history have caused the biggest outcry so far (probably because they are unworkable). We need to turn this trickle into a flood.

I would encourage you to respond and to ask all of your colleagues to respond. We need well reasoned arguments. Time, training and resources at primary, approach, lack of enquiry are a few starters. If you want some more read my post below.

 It is hugely important that in our responses we are very firm.  Instead of saying ‘it might be difficult’, and asking questions about this flawed document, do not ask questions. Just firmly explain.  We need to be stronger by using phrases such  as:

  • ‘This won’t work because…’
  • ‘This will be impossible to implement because…’
  • ‘If this is published in this form we will not implement it because…’
GOOD LUCK!

Oh dear oh dear oh dear! It really did end in lists!?

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Oh dear oh dear oh dear!!

The drafts of the new National Curriculum for history were published on Thursday…what can I say that hasn’t already been said? I have been speechless since reading them.

If you haven’t had a chance to look, you can the proposals here.

Read it and weep! Bury your head in your hands. Think about working in Tescos, or a call centre. After all these occupations have got to be more appealing than teaching this incoherent overly prescriptive mess.

What is crazy about this whole process, is that no one from the history teaching community was consulted during the drafting of this whiggish list. There was no curriculum working party, the Historical Association were not involved at all. This kind of approach comes from Orwell’s 1984 – ‘he who controls the present controls the past’. Being given a set list of topics that must be taught in a particular order is something one would expect from a dictatorship, not from a democratic government.

The detail is in places awful. It is far too heavy. And the worst of it is that most of it is to be delivered by our hard working but non specialist primary colleagues.

We can moan all we like but as a community of history teaching professionals we must act now. We must coherently explain why this overly prescriptive long, extensive list of dry events is like will be the death of the subject that we love.  We need to lobby our local MPs, shouting from the roof tops at what a retrograde step publishing this document in its present form woud be. We must take the HA poll and  comment on the HA forum thread on this. We need to comment on the schoolshistory forum. We need to tweet and retweet like mad. We need to join the facebook group.  We must attend the Historical Association’s meetings on this across the country. We need to lobby the DfE in the hope that they are willing to listen (Pam Raven is the subject leader for the National Curriculum Review for History). We need to email members of the Education Select Committee explaining why this curriculum development simply won’t work. Most importantly we must respond to the consultation by the 16th April.

So why won’t it work?

  • Primary teachers are being asked to teach content and topics that are totally new to them (unless they were teaching in the mid 1980s or before). There are no resources available for them and, thanks to LA cuts, no advisers or consultants left to train them to do this. History for All clearly pointed out the lack of subject specific CPD at this level.  In any case, most primary schools are more concerned about the changes to the core subjects. They won’t have time to consider the how best to trawl through this turgid treacle (where is the time going to come from to do this? Maths? English?).
  • Key Stage 3 has been robbed of all the dear to heart topics that kids love so much and have been left with a diet of mainly dry political and economic events which will bore the pants off many of them.
  • If primary schools cannot deliver the teaching of 500BC to 1700AD then a whole generation of kids will have a bigger black hole in their historical understanding.
  • The whole curriculum is to quote Mr Gove, supposed to be ‘less prescriptive’. In fact it is the most prescriptive straight jacket that has been thrust down to us in the history of history teaching. If you compare this with the document for geography which offers teachers choice in the topics they can teach, you can see what this document really is – politically driven to control what is taught to future generations.
  • Although the concepts and processes are there somewhere at the beginning, there is no mention of the enquiry – this is s what Ofsted’s subject specific guidance tells us is the best way to teach our subject.
  • The tradition of schools history is that it an analytical subject which encourages independent thought and debate. It is not a subjective list to be regurgitated but not understood.
  • If you take each piece of content on the list and suggest that it needs one or two hours teaching time, for many schools,there is not enough time on the curriculum to cover all the content suggested.

And that’s just for starters.

Please, please, please get involved. It really is time to act.

 

The view of the Secret History Teacher: Red, amber and grrrrrrrrrr.

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Here is our new blog feature. Rather than have me or Neil post our thoughts, we have asked a secret history teacher to tell us how it is for them at the chalk-face in 2013. Here is the first post. Enjoy.

Red, amber and grrrrrrrrrr.

You know the feeling, staring at the screen, eyes losing focus through a combination of fatigue, boredom and the grubby feeling of dishonesty. Yes, it’s that time again when SLT want to know how well the ‘self-contained learning units’ are doing in your history lessons.

Can there be many other activities as intellectually bankrupt, or as professionally dishonest, as regularly awarding a sub-divided level just to satiate a Deputy Head teacher’s pathological hunger for data? Yes, we all know that we must monitor how well our students are doing, but how often are teachers pressured into entering a number just to meet the demands of a wildly optimistic target grade? How many of us hesitate to enter a number for fear that the little cell in Excel or Sims will turn to amber, or worse, red?  How many NQT’s and RQT’s enter a figure while the image of angry, sharp elbowed parents runs through their minds? With many schools now insisting on four levels of progress as the norm, the pressure on teachers will only intensify.

Where does it leave the kids? Those of us that remember a smattering of the research from the PGCE, will wonder which study ever showed that all students make progress at exactly the same rate. Yet SLTs across the land insist that little Jonny (not the brightest, but keen, loves castles) and delightful Imogen (so mature and polite, loves to read) must both make two sub-levels of progress in year 7. No sympathy for the late developer (and how many boys fall into this category?) when faced with so much red, so often, on their report. By year 9, if you’re lucky, Jonny is apathetic, disengaged maybe even depressed. Worst case scenario, Jonny is all of the above and disruptive to boot. Maybe, if his confidence had not taken such a kicking, Jonny would have got there. Perhaps like so many kids he would have made real leaps and bounds in year 9.

I haven’t even started on the issue of whether levels should be sub-divided or used to assess individual pieces of work. I don’t have the time. I have to finish these reports and I know the Deputy Head teacher was disappointed the last time I did them…

Developing a love of art through history

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For many people working in schools these are dark days. Everything is being changed. Many of the changes seem to be made on purely ideological grounds. But spare a thought for our colleagues who teach the artistic areas of the curriculum. Less and less children will have access to these amazing subjects if schools react and follow the government’s arms length control measures (changes to league tables). Unfortunately the phrase, ‘a broad and balanced curriculum’ is one which is being ignored by policy makers

So, here at History Resource Cupboard we think it is our duty to help to continue to develop young people’s appreciation of art through our history lessons. We have fingertip access to a treasure chest of brilliant pieces of art work (search google images, go onto museum and art gallery websites to find these hidden gems). Many of which have deep historical meaning which all kids can access as the literacy barrier doesn’t hinder them. Check out Ford Maddox Brown’s ‘Work’ to give you a cross section of city life in the mid 19th century. The image was found on Wikipedia.

Brown

Not only is it important that we give our youngsters access to the wonderful world of art,  we also have a duty to develop this understanding through what Ofsted describe as SMSC (Spiritual, Moral, Social, Cultural development). If a school does not provide enough of these opportunities, it can fail an ofsted inspection.

So, despite the darkness of the times, help bring light into your lessons by using more paintings!

If you want ideas for which paintings we love to use and how to use them read this article on our teaching ideas pages.

 

 

 

Want to improve your practice and grades at GCSE history? Course you do

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Ever wondered what is going on in the best practitioners classrooms at GCSE? How on earth do they ensure that kids make that beloved progress everyone is obsessed with without compromising on certain principles?

What do people who set the exam papers think makes good history teaching?

Are you concerned about what shape the new curriculum at Key Stage 3 and 4 will end up looking like?

If the answer to these questions is yes, then why not sign up for this course.  With Mike Maddison, Ofsted’s history adviser talking about the national picture at GCSE, Ben Walsh examiner / author / consultant sharing best practice, and me chipping in my two pennies worth it could prove to be just what you need for the New Year.

Click here for more info

Old fashioned thinking about assessment

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It is official: schools are assessment crazy! I recently spoke two teachers who told me that where they teach they have to get their students to produce a levelled piece of work every two weeks!! How mad / crazy / ill informed / laughable / depressing * is that!  Where is there any time to actually teach them anything?

(*Delete as appropriate).

Well lets muddy the  water a little more by chucking into the assessment pond the idea of the unsupported assessment.  Excuse me for stating the bleedin’ obvious but by unsupported assessment we mean setting up a question or a task which the kids have under take without any writing frames, or success criteria shared by the teacher. So no, ‘this is what you need to do get a level 8′ nonsense. Instead the kids have to answer the question or complete the task using the skills you have taught them in a set time period (20 minutes or so).

Those AfL junkies amongst you will be berating us for being so out of fashion and unfair I’m guessing. ‘Wot no success criteria?’ In this instance it is a resounding ‘NO!’

Why do we advocate this approach? Simple.  Such assessment pieces help pin point where our pupils are at in their historical thinking at a particular point in time. But this type of assessment  does come with a health warning: It is vital that pupils are actually taught the skills and knowledge that we want them to grasp before we actually assess them.

Only when we are sure they are ready to show us what they have learnt and understood, do  we throw in a well measured  unseen question or task. Then we can use carefully crafted mark-scheme to pin point exactly where they are at.  Neil Thompson, ex Hampshire history adviser was in my mind the pioneer of such an approach – thanks Neil for showing me the light.

The first challenge for the teacher is in planning the lesson sequence to ensure that they have grasped what you want them to grasp: how you given them the opportunities to explore the concepts and types of understanding you want them to? If the answer is no, then you need to adapt your teaching and lesson planning to make sure that you do before setting up your kids for failure,

The second challenge is to decide what types of thinking you want to assess and what high or low responses might look like. This is hard but essential work.

We also think it is vital in this type of assessment not to show the kids the mark-scheme, nor to allow them access to cards, books or notes that have been made previously. Occasionally it is good to see what they can do unaided.

We would advocate that kids do not do this type of assessment all of the time. We should  often  model, come up with the criteria for what makes a great piece of work and show them exactly what good work looks like.

But just occasionally we want to see if they can do this thinking alone. The information you yield from these ‘unsupported’ assessments can then be triangulated with other more open style end products that kids produce and even oral answers they give in class discussions. All of this as a whole will help you work out where they are at. No one assessment type should dominate.

If you want to see examples of unseen assessment questions / task and mark-schemes check out an example which has been added to our Hastings enquiry, or the example that goes alongside our Opium War enquiry. Both are free downloads.  Also, coming very soon is a great little lesson with accompanying unsupported assessment on the significance of Wat Tyler.

For a more detailed account of our thinking on assessment go no further than here.

Happy history teaching… (if you get time in between uploading meaningless sub-levels to a data base to keep SLT happy and then being asked such inane questions as, ‘why hasn’t this child made 2 sub levels of progress this week?’ Simple answer: ‘they won’t because sub levels do not exist for history you idiot – check the back of the National Curriculum document!!’)

 

How James Bond can help your history teaching

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I went to see the latest James Bond film last night…cracking. What great entertainment.

I love a good Bond.  And, to put my neck on the line, I think that Daniel Craig is the best Bond ever.  Why? Well for loads of normal reasons. He is hard, tough, well dressed, likes a tipple, doesn’t say too much, is convincing as a killing machine…

But the main reason is… his voice. Having listened really carefully to him, it took me a while to work to place where I heard him else where…then it struck me. On a schools video that I have used loads of times with kids.  Mr Craig is the narrator to a BBC documentary on the rise of the Nazis made about 14 years ago!  You can watch it here.

For lesson ideas on using videos in the history classroom in general and this film in particular click here.

So there you go. James Bond can help your history lessons!