Sir, My honours history degree course (letters, July 31, etc) at Manchester University in the late 1940s was an excellent broad spectrum. Greek and Roman, Medieval European, Medieval British, Modern British, Modern European, Social and Economic British and Imperial History were the main ingredients. In addition undergraduates studied three subsidiary subjects in the first year and, in their final year, the History of Political Thought, an optional subject and a special subject. One wonders how today’s students would cope with such a course.
Much of the blame for the lack of breadth of knowledge and understanding in today’s history undergraduates can be laid at the door of the “modernising” concepts which began to permeate history syllabuses and examinations from the late 1960s. Egalitarian theories of education, CSE, the Schools Council History Project, GCSE, the watering down of the content of the A-level syllabus, personal studies all led to a concentration of study on smaller and smaller periods of history.
Textbook and resource-pack suppliers responded to the demand, resulting in further concentration on limited areas to be studied. How sad that a student having studied 20th-century history at GCSE and at A level should wish to study the same again at university.
We are repeatedly informed that results have improved and are improving — of course they are, if the goalposts are being widened.
There is nothing wrong with history programmes on TV, indeed some of them are excellently done; but they are not an academic study in themselves. They can serve as an incentive to a broader view of history — and that is what history syllabuses and examinations in schools should be aiming at.
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Yours faithfully,
RAYMOND CLAYTON,
415 Rochdale Road, High Crompton,
Shaw, Oldham OL2 7NW.
July 31.