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Executive summary Introduction The lessons of the Iraq war History and citizenship A hundred years of history for citizens The role of historians History & Policy About the author
Executive Summary
Active citizenship in a deliberative democracy stands in much greater need of critical historical knowledge than is generally recognised. The history taught in schools under the National Curriculum is seriously deficient in this regard.
The historical profession pays too little attention to the role it could play in disseminating critical historical knowledge through the media; a crucial dimension of public history is thus downplayed. In discounting the merits of public history, historians set aside the insights of their predecessors since the mid-19th century. Public history for citizens consists of both agreed historical knowledge (as foregrounded in History & Policy) and an awareness that historical interpretation is a matter of debate and contention.
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Introduction
This is a book about the practical rationale of historical knowledge in contemporary Britain. To a considerable extent it was inspired - and indeed made possible - by the material which History & Policy has placed in the public domain over the past five years. In the book I make explicit the assumptions about public history in Britain which inform many of the contributions to the website. It is my hope that the book will spread awareness of the potential of applied history beyond the constituencies which currently make use of History & Policy. I make two connected arguments. First, thinking historically has a crucial part to play in the intellectual equipment of the active, concerned citizen (an earlier draft of the book had as its sub-title the somewhat unwieldy 'resources for a critically empowered citizenry'). Second, at present this civic role is ill served by the media, by the schools, and by historians themselves. Time and again, complex policy issues are placed before the public without adequate explanation of how they have come to assume their present shape, and without any hint of the possibilities which are disclosed by the record of the past. This is not the only democratic deficit in British society at present, but it is one which attracts little serious public discussion. Reducing that deficit may, as Ludmilla Jordanova points out, involve confronting deeply held popular myths, with very uncertain prospects of success. But on many of the topics to which historical perspective can profitably be applied the problem is not the tenacity of myth but the lack of any relevant knowledge at all. Here gains in popular understanding can be made with greater confidence. back to top
For me the Iraq War was a wake-up call. Here was a crisis which manifestly had its roots in the past. Yet during the long lead-up to the invasion in 2003, there was almost no attempt to uncover that past in the media. Instead the British public were repeatedly told that Saddam Hussein was another Hitler - in spite of the fact that analogies which leap over both time and space are the least illuminating. Little was said about the earlier British occupation of Iraq in 1914 and the ensuing attempt to rule the country through a puppet ruler (as pointed out by Beverley Milton-Edwards). There was constant unrest in the country - met by the deployment of RAF bombers as a routine arm of the administration - until the British relinquished overall control in 1934. At the very least such a perspective would have brought sharply into focus the risk of continued insurgency and instability in post-invasion Iraq. In public government ministers dismissed the merits of historical perspective: Tony Blair told the US Congress in July 2003, 'There has never been a time.... when, except in the most general sense, a study of history provides so little instruction for our present day'. What we have been told of Cabinet deliberations suggests an engagement with history which was only a little less superficial. Perhaps the most depressing aspect of this episode is that there was so little appetite for historical enlightenment among the public. It was as if the bearing of historical perspective on issues of urgent concern was lost on the British people, indicating a political culture in which there was less readiness than ever to draw intelligently on the past. back to top
and the global; and schools would be failing in their social duty if the history curriculum did not also devote time to the Holocaust and the slave trade. There are sound arguments for each of these. But the end result is a history curriculum without coherence. Historians routinely condemn the 'sushi bar' of history (though the metaphor is inappropriate if it implies consumer choice). Instead of emerging from school with a sense of history as an extended progression, students learn to 'think in bubbles' (as David Reynolds has put it). The fragmentation of history permits many political bases to be covered, but at very heavy cost. Constant switching from one topic to another means that students do not learn how to think historically. They fail to grasp how the lapse of time always places a gulf between ourselves and previous ages; to recognise instances of a process or trajectory still unfolding in the present; and to understand that any feature of the past must first be interpreted in its historical context. The absence of meaningful historical perspectives on the crisis in Iraq was thus hardly surprising (the credibility of the comparison of Saddam with Hitler was also enhanced by the heavy weight placed by post-14 History teaching on the Third Reich). This failure is sometimes condoned on the grounds that the history taught in schools cannot be expected to equip students with all the background they will need for every political eventuality. It would indeed be absurd to criticize schools in the 1980s and 1990s for not having taught the history of Iraq. That would be to misunderstand the social role of history. The fault of the education system lies, not in having omitted to teach the history of Iraq, but in having failed to convey the essentials of historical thinking which are applicable to Iraq - and to any number of subjects whose topicality will only become apparent as the future unfolds. This is an argument which has particular relevance to public understanding of international affairs, since the next flash-point of global concern is proverbially hard to predict. back to top
inaugural lecture as Regius Professor at Oxford University. He outlined his approach to the teaching of history in these terms: The stock of information accumulated is only secondary in importance to the habits of judgement formed by the study of it. For we want to train not merely students, but citizens...... to be fitted not for criticism or for authority in matters of memory, but for action. Ten years later, following the establishment of state elementary education, Stubbs spelt out the democratic implications: If the study of history can really be made an educational implement in schools, it will raise up a generation who not only know how to vote, but will bring a judgement, prepared, trained and in its own sphere exercised and developed, to help them in all the great affairs of life. What is striking about this passage is that Stubbs did not echo the standard justification for history-teaching in schools, that it would instil patriotism and deference. Instead he emphasised the power of judgement acquired through the study of history. The value of history lay not in the detailed knowledge of particular periods or problems, but in a distinctive cast of mind - a standard of judgement which might be exercised on any subject. What Stubbs prescribed for the school pupil was in this respect identical with what he recommended to his Oxford students. Other leading historians agreed with him. When the Historical Association was founded in 1906, A.F. Pollard declared that its journal, History, would 'bring the light of history to bear in the study of politics.... to test modern experiment by historical experience.' In 1913 G.M. Trevelyan - then a progressive Liberal - declared that the educational role of history was 'to train the mind of the citizen into a state in which he is capable of taking a just view of political problems.' At a time when the citizenship agenda is still in flux, it is worth being reminded of these debates. Pollard's remark about testing modern experiment by historical experience would not be out of place in the introduction to a remodelled National Curriculum. back to top
remains a yawning gap between the academic output of historians and the reading matter of the educated public. There is still the feeling that 'going public' is not for scholars. Part of the explanation is that the priorities of scholars are over-determined by the current research regime: books written for a general audience mean less time for meeting the pressing requirements of the Research Assessment Exercise. But the objection runs deeper than that. Some scholars worry that their less scrupulous colleagues will play to the gallery and bend their interpretation to the prevailing prejudices. This is a residue of the shock experienced by the older generation at the prostitution of historical scholarship in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, which gave rise to the belief that any admission of relevance is the thin end of the totalitarian wedge. At root, however, it is anxieties about professional standing which account for most of this hostility to public history. Historical scholarship is both more technical and more theoretical than it was even twenty years ago. Abstruse analysis accompanied by lengthy foot-notes marks out the serious professional and is entirely inappropriate for a lay audience. Above all, the practicalities of popularisation would seem to eliminate the debates and controversies which are meat and drink to historians. How can they confidently communicate 'relevant' history to the public when so much of the content rests on a quicksand of contested interpretation (a point made by Ludmilla Jordanova)? Where historians position themselves in this debate depends on how highly they value public history. Writing for one's peers and writing for a non-specialist readership are two different registers. Addressing the public - whether through the printed word or broadcasting - undeniably involves a dilution of standards. The scaffolding of scholarship is pared down to a minimum. Documentation and analysis are less rigorous. On the other hand plurality of interpretation is less of an obstacle than it might seem. Few things would make for a more mature understanding of current affairs than an awareness that the relevant historical perspectives are themselves the subject of debate - particularly if those controversies bear on the present. It then becomes possible to think outside the box - to challenge the spurious authority of single-track thinking - for example Margaret Thatcher's slogan TINA ('there is no alternative'). Indeed it is precisely this plurality of interpretation which provides the best defence against the danger of history being enlisted in the cause of propaganda (of a totalitarian or any other kind). As Joyce Appleby, Margaret Jacob and Lynn Hunt have shown, the clash of historical perspectives is one route to a 'revitalised public.' Important though a sense of controversy is to public discourse, a great deal of historical knowledge rests on firm foundations (notwithstanding the scepticism of some Postmodernists). An important service is performed in restoring to public memory events and trends from the past which are beyond contention. In such cases the anxiety expressed by John Arnold about the partisanship of politically focused history is misplaced. Thus to return to the case of Iraq, there is still debate over the motives of the British occupation in 1914 and the depth of the indigenous resistance, but there is no disputing that the occupation and the resistance took place. In 2003 even to know this
much was grounds enough for taking seriously the possibility of political failure in a post-Saddam Iraq. back to top
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