For this assignment, I would like you to
write a historiographical analysis of the
history you studied at school.
Historiography for Beginners
Dr Marcus Collins, Loughborough University
marcus.collins@lboro.ac.uk
For this assignment, I would like you to
write a historiographical analysis of the
history you studied at school.
• Did you learn more ‘traditional’ history than ‘new’
history?
• Was the study of history presented to you as being
more of a ‘science’ than an ‘art’?
• In what ways do you think politics shaped the history
curriculum and the way in which it was taught?
• To what extent did your schooling achieve the declared
aim of the national curriculum in history of ‘promoting
citizenship [and] … pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and
cultural development’?
• Certainly it is much simpler to teach traditional history rather than
new history and I believe this is the reason that at a lower age,
traditional history is the fundamental way of teaching.
• [A] more ‘traditional’ form of history was taught [at primary school]
because it is simpler to teach the basics in order to understand
more broad history later on
• [T]he vast majority of my lessons were based upon ‘traditional’
history. My opinion is that while at secondary school the
‘traditional’ history style was used because it is the style that has
been around the longest and is the easier of the two to participate
in from a younger age and lower ability of analysis.
• The choice of choosing ‘traditional history over its more modern
‘new’ counterpart is one which younger people enjoy I believe.
• Key stage three in secondary school was aimed at setting a
structure to subjects with clear aims and also introduced more
complex topics, such as social standings and to a degree economic
influences ... which shows ‘new’ history in action.
• Growing up, I was taught ‘Traditional’ History. ... However, almost
ten years later, the History I knew begun to change ... I had not
previously encountered such as the study of society and the study
of groups of people. This, I now know as ‘New’ History.
• GCSE was focused primarily around learning dates, facts and figures
on events in order to be able to regurgitate them for the exam in
the summer. The emphasis on elites was clear... [But at A-Level]
Instead of focusing of the role of the individual upon history, we
focused on the way history impacted the individual.
• When I came to study A level I was told to almost ignore what I was
told at GCSE.
• Key stage three in secondary school was aimed at setting a
structure to subjects with clear aims and also introduced more
complex topics, such as social standings and to a degree economic
influences ... which shows ‘new’ history in action.
• Growing up, I was taught ‘Traditional’ History. ... However, almost
ten years later, the History I knew begun to change ... I had not
previously encountered such as the study of society and the study
of groups of people. This, I now know as ‘New’ History.
• GCSE was focused primarily around learning dates, facts and figures
on events in order to be able to regurgitate them for the exam in
the summer. The emphasis on elites was clear... [But at A-Level]
Instead of focusing of the role of the individual upon history, we
focused on the way history impacted the individual.
• When I came to study A level I was told to almost ignore what I was
told at GCSE.
• Key stage three in secondary school was aimed at setting a
structure to subjects with clear aims and also introduced more
complex topics, such as social standings and to a degree economic
influences ... which shows ‘new’ history in action.
• Growing up, I was taught ‘Traditional’ History. ... However, almost
ten years later, the History I knew begun to change ... I had not
previously encountered such as the study of society and the study
of groups of people. This, I now know as ‘New’ History.
• GCSE was focused primarily around learning dates, facts and figures
on events in order to be able to regurgitate them for the exam in
the summer. The emphasis on elites was clear... [But at A-Level]
Instead of focusing of the role of the individual upon history, we
focused on the way history impacted the individual.
• When I came to study A level I was told to almost ignore what I was
told at GCSE.
• Throughout my school life, history was taught in its traditional
sense as designed by Ranke ...
• Throughout my time at school I have only been taught traditional
history, under the impression that this is the only way to study
history. Only by coming to university have I encountered new
history.
• I suppose the studies I performed at A level were traditional history.
Focusing on the ‘great men’ of the time, and the ‘politics’, but there
is more to life than that, and there is more to History than that.
• I overwhelmingly studied history from a ‘traditional’ viewpoint with
very little ‘new’ history that I can remember. The focus of the
history was virtually always on the big events from the period and
very rarely focused on the social effects and changes.
• Prior to studying on this programme, much of the history that I had
learnt at school was built around simply knowing the facts, figures
and statistics of a particular historical event ...
• [T]he studies never veered away from issues that didn’t
directly affect Britain.
• In my teaching, Britain was viewed as a country that would
not stand for inequality and stood by many strong principles
regarding the welfare of human beings.
• Britain was always presented in a positive, patriotic light.
• Our country and its way of governing are continually
portrayed as the perfect model for a state ...
• [T]he National Curriculum is Eurocentric ...
• Up until my first year of history in University I had taken an
extremely Eurocentrism [sic] view of the world, assuming that
Europe was all powerful, pulling the strings of the worlds
society, both economically and politically.
• [T]he teaching in schools is a very bias view of world history, a
snippet of knowledge in such a wide historical spectrum.
• If there is not a sustained movement towards world history in
future National Curriculums I fear that students will be
terribly unaware of the complexities and wonders that other
nations have to offer.
• The moral lessons learnt when studying about topics such as
slavery and Apartheid were invaluable ...
• I feel the liberal approach adopted by the national curriculum
is necessary for multicultural societies to function.
• We were taught to avoid war as it brings with it huge loss of
life and many other consequences. We were taught not to
promote nationalism as this can contribute largely to the
creation of wars as seen in both world wars.
• [T]he pedagogues ... insisted on making us ‘learn from the
mistakes of the past’, seemingly with the intention of making
us walk out of the classroom thinking ‘I must not appropriate
Africans from their homeland and sell them for profit as nonwage labourers to American cotton and tobacco producers’.
• The moral lessons learnt when studying about topics such as
slavery and Apartheid were invaluable ...
• I feel the liberal approach adopted by the national curriculum
is necessary for multicultural societies to function.
• We were taught to avoid war as it brings with it huge loss of
life and many other consequences. We were taught not to
promote nationalism as this can contribute largely to the
creation of wars as seen in both world wars.
• [T]he pedagogues ... insisted on making us ‘learn from the
mistakes of the past’, seemingly with the intention of making
us walk out of the classroom thinking ‘I must not appropriate
Africans from their homeland and sell them for profit as nonwage labourers to American cotton and tobacco producers’.
• I personally find it incredible that if you did not make it too
the second year of A level, then you most likely do not know
of the atrocities that Britain committed in years gone by, that
you associate concentration camps with Hitler and the
holocaust, but not Britain and the Boers.
• I do not think the national curriculum promoted my cultural
development much as I did not study any country outside of
Europe and America.
• I personally find it incredible that if you did not make it too
the second year of A level, then you most likely do not know
of the atrocities that Britain committed in years gone by, that
you associate concentration camps with Hitler and the
holocaust, but not Britain and the Boers.
• I do not think the national curriculum promoted my cultural
development much as I did not study any country outside of
Europe and America.
• the most traditional of historical educations being received by
overseas students
• an awareness that ‘traditional’ methods could prevail even
when studying topics that lent themselves to ‘new’ historical
approaches (for example, industrialisation or Native American
history)
• little exposure to pre-modern history, historiography or
archival research prior to university
• a perceived tension between intellectual inquiry and ‘teaching
to the test’
• a frustration with the preponderance at school of ‘traditional’
history of an empirical and high-political bent
• a perception that ‘new’ history and world history are more
comprehensive, democratic and inclusive
• a greater degree of ‘new’ history taught at later stages of
schooling, taken by students to indicate that it is more
challenging than its traditional counterpart
• widespread concern over a Eurocentric curriculum, with what little
extra-European history on offer concerning the impact of the West
upon the non-West in slavery, imperialism and the United States
• a tendency to view the concentration on British history as insular,
biased, nationalistic and associated with a ‘traditional’ approach
• concerns over the Hitlerisation of the curriculum somewhat offset
by the subject being taught as ‘total history’ and with reference to
historiographical debate
• a general desire for the study of history to include a moral
dimension
• dissatisfaction with the curriculum even among those who go on to
study the subject at university
• [I have] almost a sense of feeling cheated by the syllabus
• Why do we study what we do?