February Education Forum

Citizenship is dead. Long live history?

In the second of a series of discussions focused on the Coalition's new white paper, the speaker will be Professor Gary McCulloch, Brian Simon Professor of History of Education at the Institute of Education, London.

Education Secretary Michael Gove has recently announced a review of the curriculum. In relation to history, he has stressed the importance of both facts and historical figures. ‘One of the problems that we have at the moment’, Gove has argued, ‘is that in the history curriculum we only have two names.’

However, some feel that Gove has already started to qualify his commitment to the discipline. In particular, they refer to his proposed English Baccalaureate, for which students are only required to sit exams in Geography or History at 16.

So is History teaching in schools in crisis? If it is, how should we characterise this crisis? More positively, why do we teach History? Should it be mandatory for all students up to 16? Can it and should it transmit values? And, most fundamentally of all, what history should be taught?

February 14th 2011 at 7 PM in the Art Workers Guild, 6 Queen Square, Bloomsbury, London, WC1N 3AT

Education Forum Podcast No. 18

Reflections on The Importance of Teaching: All Quiet on the Phonics Front?
The latest EF podcast is available for download now. Tom Burkard, author of School Quangos: A Blueprint for Abolition and Reform and Inside the Secret Garden: The Progressive Decay of Liberal Education, reflects on the importance of phonics and the politicisation of reading instruction.
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