Time to end shameful neglect of Scottish history

I HAVE a confession to make.

For my generation at least, the subject also had the unenviable reputation in many schools of being poorly taught. My enthusiastic conversion to the marvellous range and intellectual excitement of history took place at university. Thank God for the broad-based Scottish arts degree, which allowed neophyte first-year students to explore the richness of academic subjects which had either passed them by or did not exist at all at school level.

In one crucial sense, the situation has changed radically for the better over the past three decades. History teaching in Scottish secondary schools has been transformed, with more imaginative teaching techniques (which often include the use of oral evidence and film) and a huge extension of interest, from the narrowly political to the encompassing of national, social and economic topics. I detect a pedagogical vibrancy in many schools, which is to be welcomed and extolled.

That is the good news. The bad news is that few Scottish pupils benefit from this revolution and so leave our schools historically illiterate, both about their own nation’s past and about wider issues of European and global significance.

The Scottish Association of Teachers of History (SATH) is an informed source on the current crisis. Provision for the teaching of history in the early years of our secondary school system, where it is compulsory, is very limited. In S1, social subjects operate as a block, with pupils normally taking three periods a week of history, modern studies and geography. In S2, the contact time in history is one period of 53 minutes per week. SATH declares, with restrained understatement, that this is "far from ideal" for a balanced course which involves local, Scottish, British, European and World contexts.

Equally, this meagre time allocation represents a significant cut in contact hours compared with ten years ago. The majority of pupils end even this very limited exposure to the subject after S2. It is reckoned that, although enrolments vary from school to school, only a third of each year group then carry on with history. This is a situation which makes Scotland virtually unique in Europe, where provision is compulsory to the age of 16, rather than 14 as here.

With so little time available, it is inevitable that Scottish history, despite the best efforts of many teachers, will be marginalised. There may be more Scottish history taught within the history curriculum in our secondary schools than a generation ago, but this improvement is still meagre and patchy. Overloaded timetables, competition from other subjects and pupil choice mean that the majority of young Scots have little more than the sketchiest knowledge of the nation’s past. This is an educational scandal, especially in an age of devolution.

Historical study is a necessary part of the formation of citizens in modern democracies. It is the memory of society, teaching us to understand how we came to be the way we are. History situates the contemporary world in a much broader perspective and context. It allows us to critically examine beliefs, prejudices and assumptions, and promotes a more realistic approach to them. The case for Scottish history has, therefore, never been stronger. Fascinating new research and fresh insights are now being produced on an unprecedented scale from our universities. The success of television history, including, most recently, the very popular, six-part BBC Two series Scotland’s Empire, proves the widespread hunger that exists for understanding our past.

Scottish history is not a dead subject, but one of enormous dynamism and relevance to the nation’s place in the modern world. Scottish youngsters deserve more exposure to an area of knowledge vital to the appreciation of culture, landscape, architecture, literature, politics, economy and much else.

Let us hope that ministers and civil servants listen to the growing number of voices who are ashamed of this unacceptable neglect of our heritage in their ongoing review of the curriculum. However, one should not be too optimistic. The powers that be in education have a firm resistance to prescribing what should be taught in Scotland’s classrooms, although such intervention is probably essential if more precious curriculum time is to be devoted to a study of the shaping of the present condition of the nation through an examination of its past.

Another crucial step forward relates to the curriculum itself. Introspection and parochialism have to be avoided at all costs, but a marriage of the particular and general is possible, as other countries have shown, by making the national story the academic spine which supports consideration of European and world developments.

Tom Devine is Glucksman research professor and director of the AHRB Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen.