Lesley Riddoch - Think about that tricky Scottish history question

Published on Sunday 7 December 2008 21:03

DO TEACHERS avoid Scottish history because they don't know enough about the subject? (Scottish history is avoided – academic, 6 December 2008.)

In a current Radio Scotland series, Richard Dargie, the Edinburgh academic quoted above, has a good deal more to say on the subject and so do teachers and pupils. And it might benefit everyone to have a good listen before Burns' classic poem of betrayal, Parcel of Rogues, is quoted, battle flags are unfurled, and authorities are accused of acting like Uncle Toms.

Of course teachers are wary of teaching what they weren't taught themselves. Of course the British authorities were once wary about teaching Scottish history in case it turned us all into little nationalists. Of course, as a result, my generation has been largely self-taught – Prebble and Tranter probably opened more minds than a generation of history teachers. But that includes the current generation of history teachers – some almost evangelical in their determination to make sure the airbrushing of Scotland from the syllabus doesn't happen again on their watch.

Most teachers under 30 have been taught some Scottish history. The subject is part of academic degrees in history where previously it was not. Pupils, post-Braveheart, have at least entered school with the vague notion that something significant happened here once. History teachers have been able to use the myths embedded in Mel Gibson's fictional account to promote an attitude of sceptical inquiry amongst youngsters. So if they leave with their battles in the wrong chronological order at least they know how to question what's "given" and look for sources to corroborate claims. In the past there were no resources for teachers trying to branch out from Napoleon or Perkin Warbeck. Now there are online resources – as long as schools have the equipment to access them.

Things are not as they were 30 years ago. In fact, some youngsters are turning their backs on Scottish history because they've had too much of it. At Alva Academy, in a classroom almost overlooking the Wallace Monument, I spoke to a group of bright, animated history-loving 15-year-olds, none of whom plans to answer the Scottish option question in Higher History. Why not?

"We've had William Wallace since we were wee. We want to learn something else now."

"What about the Treaty of Union, Mary Queen of Scots, Red Clydeside?"

"Aye, we've done them."

"The suffragettes?"

"Aye, but they were British."

I can hardly believe the complexities of Scotland after the Darien scheme, the traumas of Highland life post-Culloden or the growth of No Mean City Glasgow in the last century can be "done" in two periods of history a week for three years.

So it may be unwise to extrapolate from this group of honest, entertaining and cheerfully direct kids – but even more foolish to ignore them. The Alva youngsters are trying to tell us something at a pivotal moment, because in 2011-2 it will become compulsory to answer a Scottish history question at Higher. And on present form, they'll do that question with gritted teeth. Why?

Their world is global in a way it never was for people of my age. When we were educated, the Soviet bloc and China were big forbidden red shapes on the map – all past, no present. Now they are dynamic, changing societies. My generation was birthed in class conflict. The miners' strike, Thatcher, us and them, boom and bust, class and Clause 4. And yet my generation responded by creating the politics of place. We engaged not in the class struggle of our parents but the Border Battle. A Scottish Parliament would be a bulwark against the worst excesses of any future Thatcher – and the fight for that became the unspoken mission of many current forty-somethings.

Now we are miffed that the next generation takes that achievement as read, and is eager to move on.

Climate change. European integration. World poverty. Looking cool. None of which obviously requires knowing a lot about the Weavers' Revolt. Don't get me wrong. The world is being inexorably Americanised and sucked dry of "local" content and we need to know what's successfully distinctive about Scotland to stop it becoming the 51st state.

This is not a moment to do nothing, but to think for a while before wellying in with compulsion, emotional accusations of betrayal and blame and yet more super-servings of William Wallace.

What did you want to know more about when you were 16? What's familiar or what's new? Teenagers everywhere are pushing boundaries, untying apron strings and delving beyond the concerns and preoccupations of their parents to the world beyond. Sixteen-year-olds who've been birled round the Wallace Monument on an annual basis and taught the Wars of Independence since they were in nursery school are simply saying enough. They are bored with mince and tatties in a buffet of world cuisine.

The current BBC TV series Scotland's History is a timely and sparky reminder that there's more to Scottish history than Wallace – and indeed more to Wallace than a legacy of English-beating. Scotland's youngsters need and deserve a planned and varied Scottish history diet – from nursery to Highers. Ironically the more that anxious adults bang the drum about Scottishness, and the more defensive teachers become about who decides the curriculum – the less kids hear anything compulsive, important, fascinating or life-enhancing about Scotland as a valid location from which to survey the world.

The near complete absence of Scottish history in the past was a mistake. But overkill on a few well-worn themes isn't much better.

A thousand flowers should blossom in Scottish history classrooms. Instead familiarity appears to be breeding contempt. Open minds are needed to find out why.

&#149 What You Didn't Learn in School is on Radio Scotland, Sundays till Christmas, 10:30am.