Tuesday, December 20, 2011

History a forgotten subject

I love history, I love reading up on various aspects of both world, English and local history I find it endlessly fascinating and will occasionally indulge in what ifs as in what might have happened if things had gone differently. But history is also important if we are to remember who we are and how we got here which is why the latest figures on the number of schools who failed to enter a single pupil in GCSE history are so disturbing.
Telegraph.

More than 150 comprehensives failed to enter a single pupil in GCSE history exams last year amid fears the subject is becoming limited to private and grammar schools.
In Knowsley, a Merseyside local authority, just 11 out of 2,000 pupils took A-levels in the subject, with only four passing their exams.
The figures in a report published today suggest that pupils in areas like Knowsley are 46 times less likely to gain A-level history than more affluent places like Cambridge, where 665 out of 6,038 candidates sat the exam, 557 of whom passed.
Ministers are increasingly concerned about the pupils' level of historical knowledge when they leave school, with a recent study showing half of English 18 to 24 year olds do not know Nelson masterminded the British victory at the Battle of Trafalgar.
The report was produced by Chris Skidmore, a Conservative MP on the Commons All-Party Group on History.
It shows that fewer than 30 per cent of 16 year old state school pupils took GCSE History exams last year, while the figures in grammar and private schools were 55 and 48 per cent respectively.
In more than half of all state secondary schools, fewer than a quarter of eligible pupils take the exam, the report said.
I had the feeling that the socialist stranglehold in the teaching sector along with the previous governments wholesale dumbing down of education standards was quite deliberate when coupled with its multicultural and diversity driven agenda in order to destroy the English as a people. After all if we didn't know where we came from or why, then we could be moulded (in theory) to believe what they wanted. Not that the current government with its pseudo socialist Lib Dem minority has done much to reverse the trend until now and it may actually be too late to repair the damage for a generation or two at least and there's always the chance that people might be foolish enough to re-elect Labour again at some stage, after all the bribes to certain sectors of the populace were big enough. That coupled with simple spite and a calculating manipulation of the media always seems to put the Tories on the back foot and the liberal/socialist agenda over the last decade is still being slavishly followed by the current government, rather than by hacking away root and branch at the malaise caused by socialisms poisonous doctrines and removing its placemen from positions of power.
We forget who we are at our peril, it may be too late for the current generation, but it might not be too late to stop it for the next one.
We can but hope.

6 annotations:

DerekP said...

I give Flashman books as presents to inspire my younger relatives with humour and references - in an odd way it helps that some 'correct' adults look down on these works.

When I hear comments (mostly from ignorant adults) about how shameful it is to bring up 'colonial history' I ask "if the British were so bad how come so many British institutions and laws are still kept in those countries, and how come so many people from those so-called oppressed countries come to Britain if the British and their history are so bad?".

Let's not forget Britain was competing with other countries, and they all adopted similar methods because they worked. A significant difference with the British, though, was rule of law rather than despotism, and the idea of improvement which must have led to the British actions to stop the slave trade - African and Muslim participation in this vile trade being frequently glossed over by 'revisionists'.

Anonymous said...

I know a school where they threw out every single book which was printed more than 7 years ago " as they were of no relevance to todays youth" That this is happening in Britain is quite astonishing. It is exactly the sort of thing Pol Pot did in Cambodia.

Anonymous said...

I agree wholeheartedly with the tenet of your post, and fear the consequences (as if we haven't seen enough already).

The thing I'm confused about though is that with the disappearance of history, the decline in sciences, maths, geography, foreign languages... what the F*** are these students studying? We hear almost daily of the ever better results obtained in GCSE and A-levels, but do they count for anything when all those passes are in warble gloaming studies, media studies, diversity studies, how being a white, male, Christian makes you a bastard studies,....

I feel old! and wonder, bitterly, at just what point I fell asleep to wake in this dystopian alternate reality.

When will these PC idiots realise that '1984', 'Brave New World', 'Fahrenheit 451' and 'We' were fiction and not f***** instruction manuals.

Elizabeth said...

As a history graduate I can honestly say that the subject is so political charged that, nowadays it is almost an act of rebellion to take it up. I did history because, having been inspired at school I wanted to deepen my understanding of how we got to where we are,socially,politically and culturally.Now though, there are only two things you need to know about this island's history. 1)There is nothing in this country that wasn't brought in from the outside. 2)The country became powerful by enslaving and exploiting the rest of humanity.

My favourite question to people who promote this 'history'-"well who brought the spinning jenny with them"? usually produces a blank look, as they don't even know what it is.

I recently took a teaching diploma so I could teach history but couldn't find a post-am I lucky or what!

Anonymous said...

I was in Nigeria recently (well - 10 years ago, to be honest). When I told an official I was from England, he asked, "So, you here to make reparations, then?"

"And what do you want reparations for?" I replied, "we gave you roads, railways, electricity, water, telphones, television, radio, schools, hospitals, public buildings.. Just what do you want reparations for?"

His response was: "I've never thought of it that way before!"

That is a good example of the "modern" view of the "evil" empire of Britain: nothing about it was good.

People like to forget that it was because of British intervention that the death rates around the world plummeted; the health of all those under British rule or protection (many nations were protectorates) improved, with programmes to treat and eliminate many of the diseases endemic to those countries - malaria, sleeping sickness, bilharzia, and many others I cannot recall or do not know.

Being human, things did go wrong, but on the whole, the world is a much better place. And I have met many from the ex-colonies who say: "Things were so much better when the white man was in charge."

RSP

Anonymous said...

(p.s. - Elizabeth, please put a space after your punctuation!

RSP)