Dear all,

I happen to think history is probably the most important subject to be taught at school. I want to tell you, why. If I was Prime Minister, one of the first things I would do would to make history compulsory up to GCSE for all students. This is essential. It is my opinion that history is far more important than Maths, Science of English for students at GCSE level.

For any citizen, a sense of place and perspective is crucial to understanding our moral and political priorities as a national community. It provides the context for the world we inhabit, which makes claims about what we should do next politically coherent. History is thus what makes an informed citizenry. An informed citizenry, in turn, makes a better run, more caring, less short-termist political community. So, for both practical and moral reasons this reform is key.

Why the Past is Important Today

The past, in the briefest possible terms, tells us why we are where we are. It tells us how structures, arguments, ideas and material wealth have all been influential in creating the world as it is today. For example, the English Civil War and the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 are two examples of the British struggle for parliamentary democracy. In both, the structures that provide us with the context of the world we live in came about. The motivations for creating these political structures can only be understood through history. Even if the significance of particular events is partly both mythicised and exaggerated, history nevertheless provides us with the basic thrust of why things have happened in the way they have. In this way, history provides us with the essential context for our current political reality.

Past political developments tell us a lot about the common imagined experience of our nation. By telling us who we are and why we got here it tells us a lot about who we think ourselves, as a national community to be. For example, our opposition to the Nazis in the Second World War tells us a lot about our sense of identity. It tells us about the struggle we have been through to defend our democratic freedoms. It tells us about the dangers of totalitarianism. It tells us why it became unsustainable to maintain our dominant position in the world. Knowledge of the past therefore tells us why we are where we are. It tells us about the common experience of how the national community – the one which we feel an intimate connection to – has developed through history. It is this - the sense that we have an identity - that gives us moral values as a community. We value some things and we oppose others. We struggled against Nazism tooth and nail because we were deeply opposed to foreign domination and totalitarianism. What matters here is not that the actual truth is conveyed directly to students – it is very hard to do this well considering the complicated and constantly shifting nature of historiography. What matters is we give a sense of what binds us together as a civic community. A sense that we, as Britons, have a shared sense of history. This shared sense of history in turn allows us to know who we are as Britons. This in turn allows us to act as a homogeneous community, and therefore allows us to have an incredibly strong sense of moral purpose. In this sense, knowing what our history is often is vitally important in the creation of British citizens.

Without teaching history, this civic and national bond is a lot weaker. This is because we have a much weaker sense of commonality between us. When someone has very little consciousness with the national unit they identify with, they tend to more strongly identify with other communities which conflict with the nation. For example, the local community, a race, a class or a culture. This makes sense, if there is no nation, humans use their capability to naturally identify with things and causes in a different way, often with those with shared features. Although I have no statistical evidence to hand on this matter, I do think that there are some common-sense examples which show this fact as true. For example, in African American communities which have often been eschewed from inclusion into a white-designed vision of what America should be, there is a tendency to identify with one’s race in some communities. In one respect this is because there is an absence of a convincing narrative of why they should identify with predominantly white-controlled America. In essence, this shows that the inability to identify with one’s national community tends to lead to stronger identification with other communities which conflict with the national one. It is therefore imperative to establish a strong sense of history into a child of a national community – for the sake of the national community.

I am hopeful that at a GCSE level, there is the capability to establish something basic of why we are here. The complaints I have had with my argument to those I have posited it to tend to question the capability for GCSE students to understand all this, and that I am being unduly optimistic about the British education system. I think that this sort of misses the point. Even by telling children what past events that have occurred to our national community in a very simplistic way will give them some sense of the past. It is undoubtable whether or not children remember how past events actually happened that they will retain a loose sense of their significance. This sense of the significance of some key events in British and Global history is what I seek to make children understand. Of course, this sort of history may create some sort of essentially ‘Whiggish’-style history being believed by adult citizens, however, ultimately this is better than nothing. Even if the Glorious Revolution did not directly lead to parliamentary democracy in the UK, this interpretation nevertheless tells us who we are and what we value as a national community – and it is this that is important.

Why having a strong coherent identity is important

It is extremely beneficial to have a strong sense of what binds us together as citizens. It creates a better functioning state and society. It creates one that knows what it wants. What having a citizenry that is better informed can do is immense in a democracy, as I aim to show.

Teaching history will make this easier. By having a sense of the significance of our past experiences as a national community, we are able to have that greater sense of moral purpose mentioned before. This sense of purpose in turn creates conditions where citizens are able to act selflessly in the interests of the whole nation. The fact that they understand why the nation is important to them politically means that they are far more likely to sympathise when things are done for the good of the collective. For example, if there is a particular policy which will benefit everyone, but be bad for you as an individual, if you have a sense of the importance of the nation, you will be more liable to accept it. In this way, a sense of the nation makes people more selfless.

For example, in the European Union, where as I have noted in a previous blog post, there is a considerable degree of internal disagreement of the aims of the political community. Often, in fact, people prioritise the achievement of goals the relate to the nation state – i.e. Germany, Greece of Italy – at the expense of the European whole. This, in turn creates significant trouble for the European Union. Each nation state within the EU sees the Union not as an end in itself, but rather a means to an end. They see that it can provide their nation with high economic growth and this, rather than anything else, means the EU is good. It is not healthy for this to be the case - as the EU cannot act with one unified purpose towards set objectives.

A similar thing occurs when there is no sense of national community, as again I have noted in a previous blog post comparing the EU and Italy. People have no sense that they should care about the nation. As a result, the collective interest of the nation is put to one side. People fail to care about it, because the ‘nation’ in this sense is not a coherent package. Instead they prioritise ‘sectional’ interests – i.e. those that represent only a ‘section’ of the whole, like bettering oneself, bettering the family or supporting the church. This can be counter-productive to the national interest, and in turn counter-productive to the individuals themselves. This is because, and this is essential, there is a strong interdependence between an individual and the nation state. They, as individuals are reliant on the national community – whether they identify with it or not – because we do live in a world where nation states are the primary form of political organisation. As a result, the individual fails when the nation fails. When economic growth becomes anaemic because parts of the democratic national community are only acting in their self-interest, people become poor too.

This has parallels with what social scientists and strategists like to call ‘game theory’. This is an exploration of how it can be in your self-interest, when working in a society composed of more than one individual, to act against the interest of that society. The classic case study in this is the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’. I will give a brief explanation in order so you can understand. Two individuals, who have committed a crime, have been captured by the police. There is reasonable suspicion to believe that the two were guilty, but not sufficient evidence to prosecute. The police officer offers each suspect, in isolation from one another, a deal. They can either confess – and therefore receive a commuted sentence, but make the other go to prison for a very long time – or not confess, and risk going to prison for a very long time. As both are in isolation, they don’t know what the other will do. If neither confess, neither will go to prison. If one confesses, but the other doesn’t, the one that doesn’t confess will go to prison for a long time, but the other will receive a commuted sentence. If both confess, the police officer will commute their sentences, but by a lot less than if only one confesses. In this situation, if you make the decision to confess to receive a commuted sentence, you are acting in your self-interest, in order to avoid the threat of a long sentence. If you don’t trust the other individual, this is what you will do. It’s a situation of take the money and run. This, in a nutshell, is what the myth of a nation tries to avoid. It gets around this problem by planting trust between each and every member. It makes you believe that you can trust the nation, because there is a myth that the nation exists and cares for you. The nation therefore is like a guarantee that the other prisoner will not confess.

This national trust is the sturdy foundations on which we can create something that contributes to the long-term interest of the nation. By having a degree of trust that the nation is something you can identify with, and something that will always politically value you, because it is so engrained with your identity, you will be happy to sacrifice things for its betterment. You will be more tolerant of projects that promote long-term betterment, even if they cause short term pain. What’s more, those in power will also believe in this useful myth, and they will care for you. Clement Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister and architect of the welfare state is fantastic evidence for this. His brand of socialism was a peculiarly British one that came about following the Second World War, a time of massive struggle. The fact we shared this sense of external threat and struggle bound us together as a national community. We became devoted to defending our national community. Even if this is a slightly mythical interpretation, it was one that both nevertheless holds a lot of truth and became to be believed relatively deeply relatively quickly. It is the belief in the myth of struggle, rather than the actual struggle, that needs to be believed in this context. It was at this time when massive nationalisations came about across the country. It is no coincidence that this happened at the time it did. For the benefit of the whole, sectional interests were put aside. Again, it was not just due to the processes I am describing – there were other things at play here, of course – but it is undeniable that this was at least part of the story. In this way, a significant long-term change to the direction of the whole country came about when national identity was strongest. Long-term planning and big projects were initiated. It is a sense of national purpose that enabled this and this was specifically brought about by a relatively specific catalyst in the form of the Second World War.

The Meaning of this National Identity

I think there is more to this though. I think that to say that it is just important to have a national identity misses the point. I think what is important is that we implicitly have some important values that we have learned from our actions as a national community. It is the sense of identity being given a moral hue that makes the learning of history so important. What is more, I think, with appropriate and effective teaching of sufficiently varied bits of it, we can get further away from a partial understanding of it. Obviously, again here is a danger. This is of the threat of indoctrination of children into believing in a specific world view. I think this is real and cannot be denied, but as I will show, I think that this threat is a lot less real if certain precautions are taken and if we think about doing this in a certain way.

First of all, history is necessarily coloured with a moral and political hue. The intensity of this really varies, but it is certainly real. Some historians quite obviously have an implicit agenda in how they write history. Maybe, for example, they want Napoleon to be remembered as an effective ruler and a ‘Great Man’. Maybe they want to 1917 Russian Revolution as being Proletariat-led. This is brushing history with a really explicit moral hue that places certain values above others. It goes without saying we should avoid this sort of history. We should not try to indoctrinate kids. However, there is still a problem here.

This problem is that there are other, more subtle forms of skewing history. Often, by telling a story in a particular way, you are prioritising certain forms of evidence and argument over others. There is limited time, and limited evidence an individual can sift through. History is so vast that this problem is compounded. There is so much history, so many ways of telling that history, so many ways of quantifying and breaking down something so vast. As a result, picking a story to tell, and picking the way you tell it is to some extent political. We cannot avoid the problem therefore, precisely because of the incredibly vast nature of history.

I think the solution to this is that we have to be brave. However, as I will explain, the very fact we are being brave and picking a path means there is an implicit limit on how brave we can be. We need to assert the right of national communities to have their values passed down. We need to assert that the things we value right now are right, and that includes the fact that we recognise there is a need to be cautious. Either the things that we value right now are right or they are not. If they are, that is excellent as there is no problem. If they are not, then we cannot know what we should value because we cannot know what is right. What’s more, the fact that we recognise that this problem – the problem of competing interpretations – exists, means our commitment to our current truth has an implicit qualification. We will not indoctrinate children, because our society is opposed to sticking too rigidly to any one interpretation. We value tolerance as we believe that is a good. We should integrate this into our current syllabus. It is therefore the case that the current GCSE history syllabus has a commitment to understanding sources, their provenance and their probable biases. Students are taught to accept that not all things should be taken at face value. Students are taught not to accept everything as it is. Of course, as I have already pointed out, some are suspicious of the capability for students to take this all in. However, I don’t really think there is anything we can do about this other than provide the capability for children who do try hard or have better facilities or education to think in a more critically and nuanced way.

As a result, we should teach a common, generally accepted view of what our nation means. This is because, we as a nation, have decided that it is right to pass on our values and identity. We have decided to tell children that what they should value is what the ‘British’ generally have valued and continue to value. The nation, or people with a strong sense of what the nation is, need to participate in deciding what these values are. They will generally be things that we value as a society currently. For example, teaching students about the struggle for the creation of the welfare state gives them an understanding about how our nation conceives itself as a caring one. Understanding both Slavery and our fight against Slavery can teach us how our society got a large proportion of its wealth and why we felt obliged to end this cruel practise. They will form an identity that integrates this moral hue. As this is grounded in the past experiences of the national community, leading up to the present, it gives students a sense of what our identity as a nation values.

People, generally, do identify with the national community, and I believe they have every right to. Like a family, we believe ourselves for varied reasons to have a common sense of history and identity. We also believe ourselves also to have a common sense of what morality is. This is good as it allows us to act in a way that recognises that we have a common moral mission. We value things, and we seek to achieve these things. With a good sense of the real actions of our past national community, I think that it is more likely that this sense of morality of the national community is likely to be stronger. The sense that being ‘British’ means an attitude towards certain things which we deem to be moral or immoral allows us to integrate a sense of moral purpose into our polity’s actions.

Let me give you two examples. The ‘British’ nation has had some essential qualities that it sees as self-evidently peculiarly both British and moral for a long time. To understand this, I want to show how the most basic thing accepted by the British political establishment is fundamentally rooted in a justification through reference to identity. This is the nature of British liberalism – something broadly accepted across the political spectrum. From the early 17th Century, embryonic opposition to the centralising powers of government has manifested a recognisable British spin on liberalism. It has been a form of liberalism which has been relatively ad hoc, but uses history as a guide, and emphasises resistance to particular abuses of power. It is not total like continental forms of liberalism, and emphasises the ‘ancient’ character of British liberties – before the 19th Century usually explicitly. The sense that there is a common liberal thread that emphasises a relatively conservative interpretation of liberalism through British history is largely mythical, but this should not consign it to irrelevancy - as this myth has itself informed past actions. The sense that the British have had ‘ancient liberties’ has been a staple of political discussion since the reign of James I. There has always been a sense of intense interconnection between freedom and Britishness – as there is to this day. This sense has its identity in the two things being almost synonymous. The British are a ‘free’ peoples, and this freedom is identified by how it has its roots, not in today, but in the primordial mist.

In America, something quite similar happens. The idea that the USA was explicitly created in opposition to the abuse of power gives the USA’s identity an intensely moral hue. The idea that the USA is a free, liberal state built off reason makes certain moral values common. This myth, in turn has been bolstered by later events. The USA’s rejection of slavery, its entrance into the two World Wars and its opposition to Soviet Communist tyranny all allow for the USA to be conceived as a moral agent in the world that has essential values. However, at the same time, as in the UK, there is a recognition that there are ambiguities and tensions within the US’ history. It is part of the essential character of the US’ pluralistic and tolerant character that this is a recognised fact.

In this way, even if it historical education is to make a slight difference in informing our national identity, I still think it would be worth teaching. It colours our national identity in a brush of morality, and having a sense of right and wrong is good for the political community. For one, it allows us to more easily resist things that we think are fundamentally bad. Two, it allows us to move forward as a political community through the aim of achieving certain things which we deem as good. Although these goals may differ significantly, it is certain that they have some degree of commonality.

Conclusion

In Conclusion, then, history is really important for the vitality and success of a political unit. It can teach people what binds us together. It can teach people a common sense of our context in the wider world and the reasons why our identity makes us different. Having a strong sense of cohesion is important for enabling things that are of a long-term good towards society from being given the political stamp of approval. A sense that the national community has an intrinsic value that you are willing to sacrifice things for is important and should be cultivated.

What’s more it can promote the moral and political values of the political unit. These are important as they can allow the achievement of objectives which people have a deep moral attachment to. Ideas and objectives can be coloured with a moral sense of worth that appeals because it is grounded in our past experiences – imagined or real – as a political community. The sense that Britons should love or hate certain moral and political values, and this being clear in political discourse can give strong political grounds for having the national community act altruistically. It is this, which seems like a sensible end-goal, that teaching history can help cultivate.

I think it would therefore be a crime to keep history in the secondary position it lies currently. It would be a massive social good to promote this subject into a position of primacy and pre-eminence.

Yours,

WFF