‘Heroes into Zeroes'? The Politics of (Not) Teaching England's Imperial Past

Abstract

This article revisits the fiercely contested national curriculum history debates of the 1980s and 1990s. Although these debates have been subject to intense academic scrutiny, from educationists and historians alike, too little attention has been paid to the various assumptions about the inclusion (or exclusion) of hero figures in the curriculum. The article situates debate about heroes in the context of both late twentieth-century educational reform and wider historiographical analyses of Britain's (or, better put, England's) perceptions of itself as a post-imperial power. In the battle to define the content of school history, certain commentators invoked hero figures to help press their cause. What becomes clear from analysis of media intervention, however, is an ambiguity about the place and cultural/political purpose of specifically ‘imperial’ heroes. This ambiguity, I argue, reflects contemporary unease about how to confront the imperial past.

Acknowledgements

My gratitude is owed to other contributors to this special edition for their constructive comments on earlier drafts. Thanks also to John Strachan and Jeffrey Richards for discussion of ideas in progress.

Notes

1 Daily Mail, 18 April 1995.

2 For an overview of the history of history teaching, see Cannadine, Keating and Sheldon, Right Kind of History. Eric Evans traces the history of how the Victorian period was taught across the twentieth century. Evans, ‘Victorians at School’. For closer analysis of the role of the state in the development of history teaching in schools before the Second World War, see Yeandle, Citizenship, Nation, Empire.

3 This brings to mind Frank Füredi's observation that there was no longer ‘a history with a capital H; there are many competing histories'. Füredi, Mythical Past, 8.

4 Jones, “‘The Truth about Captain Scott’”.

5 Sèbe, ‘From Post-Colonialism to Cosmopolitan Nation-Building’; and Bickers, ‘Moving Stories’.

6 It is no exaggeration to suggest that NC debates provoked questions about culture and identity in the UK in the same way that debate about the National History Standards was to unleash furious debate in the United States. See Nash, Crabtree and Dunn, History on Trial. For international perspectives, see Foster and Crawford, eds, What Shall We Tell the Children?

7 Phillips et al., ‘Four Histories', 153. See also McKiernan, ‘History in a National Curriculum’.

8 Daily Express, 4 April 1990.

9 Independent, 22 Aug. 1989.

10 Guardian, 4 Jan. 1990.

11 Robert Phillips expertly traces debates about the ‘making’ of the NC in his History Teaching, though his work contains very little comment on teaching the imperial past or the contested role of heroes. For more on the NC debates, see also McCulloch, ‘Privatising the Past’; Crawford, ‘History of the Right’; Little, ‘National Curriculum for History’. Abby Waldman's recent intervention is of interest to this special issue given she contrasts Britain's curriculum debates with those in France. Waldman, ‘Politics of History Teaching’.

12 I use ‘English’ very deliberately here. Scotland would retain its own education system. Statutory orders would apply to Wales, but, as is clear in a number of studies, NC debates provoked such severe discussion since they related largely to English history and the politics of English identity. Seminal texts on ‘four nations historiography’ were cited in the responses of educationists. See, for instance, Phillips et al., ‘Four Histories'. For Welsh perspectives, see Jones, ‘Debate over the National Curriculum’.

13 See, for example, Letwin, Anatomy of Thatcherism; and Lawton, Tory Mind on Education.

14 See, for instance, Turner, State and the School.

15 Slater, Teaching History; and Van der Leeuw-Roord, State of History Education.

16 de Groot, Empire and History Writing; Mandler, History and National Life. Mandler has contributed much to the debate in recent years through public engagements and blogging. See, for instance, Mandler, ‘Is History in Danger?’.

17 There are a few exceptions, though contributions tend either to be short opinion pieces or cover a long chronology. Harnett, ‘Heroes and Heroines'; Sherwood, ‘Race, Empire and Education’; Visram, ‘British History: Whose History?; and Marks, ‘History, the Nation and Empire’, 111–19.

18 Cannadine, Keating and Sheldon, Right Kind of History, 16–17.

19 Star, 5 May 1994.

20 Sun, 20 Sept. 1995.

21 A view explored, and contested, by Howe, ‘Internal Decolonisation?’.

22 Fortier, ‘Pride Politics', 563.

23 Runnymede Trust, Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, 25.

24 Research funded under the ESRC Devolution and Constitutional Change programme, Award No. L219-205-2035. The project, on which I worked as an ad hoc researcher, sought to investigate public history through three research angles: historiography, heritage and the media. Unfortunately, following the untimely death of Professor Phillips, the project was unable to fulfil all its original objectives. The project database I compiled charted newspaper coverage, identifying key dates. A volume containing short essays on historiography was published in 2004. Brocklehurst and Phillips, History, Nationhood and the Question of Britain. This included a short scoping essay which made brief use of newspaper research. Brocklehurst and Phillips, ‘“You're History”’. A special issue of the International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research 3, no. 1 (2003) was given over the topic of history in schools.

25 Aldrich, ‘New History’, 210–24.

26 Price, ‘History in Danger’, 342–47.

27 Robbins, ‘History’.

28 Jones and Ward, New History.

29 SCHP, New Look.

30 See Yeandle, ‘A “Golden Age” of History Teaching?’ Papers from the conference at which this was given are being expanded for a special issue of the History Workshop Journal (forthcoming).

31 Schemilt, ‘Beauty and the Philosopher’; and Phillips, History Teaching, 17–24. As I demonstrate in my forthcoming book, many of these pedagogical approaches were not altogether new, but borrowed from the techniques used to teach younger children from the turn of the twentieth century. Yeandle, Citizenship, Nation, Empire, ch. 2.

32 On teaching methodology, see Baldwin's fascinating essay, ‘In the Heart or in the Margins', 130–44.

33 By 1989, for instance, only a quarter of schools used SHP syllabi at GCSE (the first GCSE exams were sat in 1988). Even when its syllabi were not taken up, SHP resources, including worksheets—photocopiers came of age as a resource for teachers in the 1980s—and textbooks, were popular in a large number of secondary schools. Phillips, History Teaching, 20; see also Marsden, School Textbook, 63.

34 Dennis Gunning made clear in 1978: ‘There is an academic discipline called “History”. There is also a school subject called “History”. There is no self-evident reason why they have to do the same. If we are teaching fourteen-year-olds, we should subject everything we teach them, whether a fact, a concept, or a skill to this question: “Of what use, or potential use, is this knowledge to them?”’ Gunning, Teaching of History, 14.

35 Slater, ‘History and Controversy’.

36 Ballard, New Movements, 5.

37 This is Shula Marks' phrase. Marks, ‘History, the Nation, and Empire’, 112.

38 See Osler, ‘Still Hidden’; Visram, ‘British History: Whose History?’.

39 Strong, History in the Secondary School, 49.

40 Cited by Syriatou, ‘Educational Policy and Educational Content’, 47.

41 Slater, Politics of History Teaching, 1, emphasis added.

42 Taithe and Davis, ‘“Heroes of Charity”’.

43 SCHP, New Look, 19–20, 42.

44 There were many of these; the titles of some anticipate the use of militaristic language in curriculum debates. Cox and Dyson, Fight for Education; Cox and Dyson, Black Paper Two; Cox and Boyson, Black Paper 1975.

45 On the history of the New Right and its relationship to education policy, see Quicke, ‘The “New Right”’; Chitty, Towards a New Education System; and Jones, Right Turn; Knight, Making of Tory Education Policy.

46 See Gamble, Free Economy; and Evans, Thatcher.

47 Gamble, Free Economy, 28. See also Whitty, ‘New Right’.

48 Although Thatcher was discussing history teaching in particular, her views on the negative impact of the left's historical self-understanding is clear. Thatcher, ‘Speech’. On Thatcher's attitude to history more generally, see Samuel, ‘Mrs Thatcher's Return’, 9–29; and Porter, ‘“Though Not a Historian”’, 246–56.

49 Deuchar, New History, 5.

50 Partington, ‘History: Rewritten’, 69–70.

51 Independent, 1 March 1988.

52 Crawford, ‘A History of the Right’; Cunningham, ‘Teachers' Professionalism’; see also Wallace, ‘Discourse of Derision’.

53 On the move towards ‘world history’, see the little-known essay by Samuel, published posthumously in 2003. Samuel, ‘A Case for National History?’ Simon Joyce implies that the London riots of 1981 redoubled attention to education policy, confirming the need for a return to Victorian discipline. Joyce, The Victorians, 121.

54 Kedourie, Errors, 14.

55 Ibid., 12.

56 Cited in Visram, ‘British History: Whose History’, 54–55.

57 Samuel, ‘History, the Nation and the Schools', 78.

58 These are Robert Guyver's words. Guyver, a specialist in primary school history, was one of the members of the HWG. Guyver, ‘History's Domesday Book’, 86.

59 In particular, see responses to Kenneth Clarke's decision as secretary of state for education against making history compulsory at GCSE. Phillips, History Teaching, 105–08. See also Mandler's generous account of Clarke's predecessor, Keith Joseph, who was careful to define the difference between a ‘national’ and a ‘nationalistic’ curriculum—much preferring the former and holding the latter, unlike some of the New Right, in bad taste. Mandler, History and National Life, 128.

60 Parliamentary Debates (Hansard): House of Commons Official Report, 14 Nov. 1989, col. 172.

61 Hall, Hard Road to Renewal.

62 Thatcher, Downing Street Years, 590. Dimitri Coryton, former chairman of the Conservative Education Association, bemoaned the accuracy of Thatcher's recall, claiming that in her mind ‘the expert is dismissed as a vested interest so the inexpert ideologue had the field’—see Ball, Politics and Policy Making, 48.

63 Thatcher, Downing Street Years, 595–96; and Waldman, ‘Politics of History Teaching’, 204.

64 Mail, 21 Aug. 1989.

65 Parliamentary Debates (Hansard): House of Commons Official Report, 29 March 1990, col. 668.

66 McGovern, SCAA Review. SCAA is the acronym for the Schools Curriculum and Assessment Authority.

67 Telegraph, 5 May 1994.

68 Today, 5 May 1994; Star, 5 May 1994; Sun, 5 May 1994.

69 Express, 5 May 1994.

70 For discussion, see Phillips, ‘Thesis and Antithesis', 30–33.

71 Sun, 19 July 1995; Tate, ‘Role of History’.

72 Sun, 20 Sept. 1995. For discussion, see Samuel's measured response ‘The People with Stars in their Eyes', Guardian, 23 Sept. 1995. See also Phillips, ‘Thesis and Antithesis'; and Jones and Watkins, Necessary Fantasy, introduction.

73 Sun, 5 May 1994.

74 Similar debate surfaced in 2000 in relation to statuary in Trafalgar Square, in which shock was expressed that most Britons were unable to identify Havelock's or Napier's contributions to British history. See Cherry, ‘Statues in the Square’; and Schwarz, ‘“Strolling Spectators”’.

75 Smith, Myths and Memories, 64–68.

76 Wallace, ‘Discourse of Derision’; and Ball, Politics and Policy Making, 3–19.

77 Express, 23 March 1990. See also Ball, ‘Education, Majorism’, 195–214.

78 Cited in Phillips, History Teaching, 45.

79 On this, see Quicke, ‘The “New Right”’, 5–20.

80 Some of the papers of which are reproduced as a special feature in History Workshop Journal 29 (1990): 92–133, including short articles by Clark, Raphael Samuel, Janet Nelson, Alice Prochaska and Sylvia Collicott.

81 Clark, ‘National Identity’, 101.

82 Ibid., 96.

83 Ibid., 100.

84 Billig, Banal Nationalism, 71.

85 See de Groot, ‘Empathy and Enfranchisement’, 391–413.

86 Explored in Goalen, ‘The History Curriculum’, 23–32.

87 Phillips, ‘Contesting the Past’, 43.

88 Scruton, Meaning of Conservatism, 180–89.

89 Scruton, ‘Myth of Cultural Relativism’, 134–45.

90 Beck, ‘Nation, Curriculum and Identity’.

91 Deuchar, New History, 3.

92 Carter's language brings to mind the gendered and sexualised language used in identity debates which Max Jones addresses in his article.

93 Jenkins and Brickley, ‘“Always Historicise”’, 12.

94 Clark, ‘National Identity’, 101.

95 Samuel, ‘History, the Nation and the Schools', 75.

96 Guardian, 29 May 1989.

97 Mail, 19 Sept. 1995

98 Phillips, History Teaching, 131–32.

99 Guardian, 23 Sept. 1995.

100 Samuel, ‘History, the Nation and the Schools', 78–79.

101 Independent, 31 Aug. 1989.

102 Samuel, Island Stories, 297–98.

103 S. Deuchar, ‘Letter’, Times Educational Supplement, 29 Jan. 1988, cited in Phillips, History Teaching, 43.

104 See, for instance, the mobilisation of Rees Davies' and Gwyn Williams' work on Wales and David McCrone's and Tom Devine's work on Scotland by Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party respectively. Davies, First English Empire; Williams, When Was Wales?; Devine, Scottish Nation; and McCrone, Understanding Scotland.

105 This brings to mind Tom Nairn's argument, formulated in the 1970s in the context of scholarly debate about Anglo-British relations. If one follows Nairn's view that devolution marked the final break-up of the British Empire, then the English—in seeking to reassert the primacy of traditional history—had sought a curriculum incompatible with its present realities. Empire, in Nairn's formulation, was the glue that bound Britain together and, without the empire, Englishness was the ‘the battered cliché-ridden hulk’ left behind by ‘the retreating tide of imperialism’. Nairn, Break-Up of Britain, 340.

106 Runnymede Trust, Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, 25.

107 Sun, 13 Oct. 2000.

108 Runnymede Trust, Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, 25.

109 Ibid., 38–9.

110 Ibid., 15–16, 25.

111 Mail, 11 Oct. 2000.

112 Telegraph 10 Oct. 2000.

113 Star, 12 Oct. 2000.

114 Sun, 12 Oct. 2000. On these objectives, see Richardson, ‘“Children Will Be Told Lies”’.

115 The Times, 11 Oct. 2000.

116 Fortier, ‘Pride Politics', 564–66.

117 Waldman, ‘Politics of History Teaching’, 213.

118 Ibid.

119 Gilroy, After Empire, 97–98, 102, 107–08.

120 Riley, Byrom and Culpin, This is History!.

121 Colley, ‘Britishness in the 21st Century’.

122 Mycock, ‘Enduring Legacy’, 170–91.