SOMETIMES IT’S GRATIFYING to find one’s prejudices confirmed as truths. That’s what happened when I read a document entitled Teaching Emotive and Controversial History, produced by The Historical Association. If I had previously only suspected that modern history education in the UK is more concerned with denigrating the British nation, reducing any idea of its value and elevating a few of its less admirable aspects above everything else – all to patronise a couple of contemporary victim groups and make the rest of us feel guilty – then this report confirmed it. And it all comes with lashings of touchy-feely “emotional intelligence” and progressive “solidarity”.
The premise of the report is that certain subjects are now so “emotive and controversial” that sensitivity has to be displayed in teaching them. Pupils can be upset, say the writers, not just because of the “actual or perceived unfairness to people by another individual or group in the past” but also when there are “disparities” between what is taught in “school history, family/community histories and other histories”. In my brutal and reactionary grammar-school mind that translates into: “So your dead ancestors had a bad time at the hands of my dead ancestors and you still can’t get over it. ” A pretty harsh place, history.
Now when sensitivity needs to be shown there has to be someone endued with such an excess of it they‘re deemed to require special treatment. In the gulag of post-Christian white liberal guilt you can guess through which minefields of sensitivity we are now tiptoeing.
I SHALL IDENTIFY a couple of subjects and let you guess which groups are designated sensitive.
- The transatlantic slave trade, which was abolished 200 years ago.
- The Crusades, which ended nearly 800 years ago.
I conducted my own statistical survey by counting significant key words. The results are revealing:
- Black gets 41; white 21. Black is popular.
- Slavery gets 21; slave trade a solid 24. This slavery thing is really popular.
- Arab makes a meagre 8 but Arab slave trade makes no appearance. Can’t think why.
- Ottoman makes a modest appearance with 1, and Ottoman Empire falls at zero. Can’t think why.
- Islam turns up 10; Islamic 21; Muslim 32; Muslims 22. Great showing there.
- Jews get a respectable 21, though Holocaust gets top whack with 58.
- Christian only rates a 4; Christians a paltry 2, while Christianity scores a resounding 0.
Sad to say, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists, along with their respective religions, count as little as Christians, scoring a nice round 0.
Diversity, on the other hand, gets a respectable 18, and multicultural a healthy 10. Hurrah for multicultural diversity, even if it doesn’t include sensitive Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhist and Christians.
Jews get special treatment but only as it applies to the Holocaust. Apart from that they’re not sensitive enough.
Just in case we weren’t sure who the bad guys are, the writers identity them. Talking about the nature of Britishness they praise good teachers who “are already pointing out the distortion that often results in Key Stage 2 from a predominant focus on white, male, wealthy Christian people without placing them in the context of wider diversity.” Since those people usually were the major players, “distortion” is itself a distortion of the truth, just as “black presence” and “gay and lesbian issues” are sideshows.
Given the writers’ PC agenda I found it odd that little was made of Ireland. If the writers had chucked the Irish in they could have got some extra religious bigotry and racism along with British imperial brutality. But I suppose they left them out because they’re Christians and Christians are part of the problem, especially when they’re white.
