http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... hools.html


So many kids do not know who Churchill is. No wonder they think he is the insurance dog.

My God, did his history-challenged boss come up with that one?

When I was at school, nothing in the 20th centuary was covered. Maybe it was at GCSE, but I dropped it after year nine as it bored me to death. Ironically I am interested in a lot of 20th centuary history (eg WW2), but not much before that.

History is an important subject. It puts all our society institutions in perspective. Without knowing about the Magna Carta and the English Civil War the role of parliament and the monarchy are meaningless. Also since history will still be taught at private schools it will segregate state sector pupils from the echelons of power, reducing social mobility further. You do not have to know it to A level but I think that it should still be taught to GCSE standard.

In my school we covered from the Roman era right up to 1991.

The GCSE exam was heavily biased in favour of the second world war and the cold war.

+1
without history there is no future ...

History as a subject is as dull and dry as anything, but the past remains a fascinating subject.
If history is going to have any relevance, what is taught, and how it is taught needs to be completely re-evaluated. All I remember covering for the 3 years I did it was trade in Tudor times, and the years 1910-1914, and 1918 to 1939 in Europe. To make matters worse, for 2 of those years, I had a crap teacher who just read from the textbook, occasionally making comments (or even worse, puns) on what was written.
I may well be speaking out of my rear end, but people talk of 'learning from the mistakes of history', and yet the way history is broken up into isolated chunks and taught as such isn't really conducive to learning. Wouldn't it be better to look at one theme and see how it repeats or changes through history. For instance, looking at the world today, the apparent (according to the media, at any rate) conflict between 'the western world' and 'the Muslim world', and tracing through history why stuff is in the state it is today, covering everything from the crusades, the way many European basically plundered many Islamic countries for various resources, formation of Israel, Mossadegh and the Iranian coup of '53 and then various bits about the Kurds, Kuwait, Iraq and Iran, and how this made the middle east a prime ground for recruiting terrorists, so many people aren't left with the view 'Islam is Virulent and just trying to take over', as presented by a lot of media, and instead understand it is as the result of many complex interchanges over the years, where no one side was 'right' or 'wrong', it was merely reactions to reactions, which still aren't being learnt from today. Look at the American response to 9/11 for instance. In the context of what has gone before, that can be examined in terms how it merely perpetuates the cycle that had been going for many centuries, rather than actually solving anything. And also if the justified response is always the best one.
Sorry. Went off on one, which, as I say, may have been the verbalisations of my rear. Basically so people get a much broader view of history that doesn't always have to run into the detail that dries up any interest in the subject; so they can appreciate the complexity of history without it always being spelled out in black and white. This would also provide, I feel, a better framework for which more detail can be put in much later on, A level or Uni.

I think we did something similar but can't remember how recent it stopped - maybe around 50s. This was all from Year 7-9.

The thing I hated was how it was taught. It was sooooo boring. I think it was less about learning history itself rather than analysing secondary and tertiary sources and comparing them. At the time I found it boring. Now those skills help me question what's put in front of me from the media. Hence I'll read stories from different sources.

History itself is very exciting. But it needs to be matched with that level of teaching. I remember vaguely about the Roman Empire. Romulus, Remus, wolves, close-kit formation with shields to form tanks. And that's probably about it. I remember something about Feudilism but no idea what it was. I remember reading about the Magna Carta and about Guy Fawkes and his reasons, but I don't remember any of it. Just that it was covered. I remember learning about WW1 and 2, the Cold War and some other war. Didn't cover Vietnam or the Gulf wars.

I've learnt more about history from television and midnight reading on articles.

History should be made as exciting as possible even if people are told to find out more for themselves.