History teaching takes the biscuit

Historian Liam de Paor wrote in this newspaper in the mid 1980s that "without history, the Irish nation is nothing".

That view is accepted by almost everyone in education and political circles, but the humble schoolboy and schoolgirl have, for many years, been somewhat unwilling recipients of the message.

The number of students taking the subject continues to drop and even those taking it at lower level find it hard to pass what teachers regard as a reasonably easy paper. As a relatively recent recipient of history teaching, at school and university, it always amazed me that so few pupils took the subject. One would think that, in a small State where even the capital city retains a village-like quality, there would be huge numbers choosing a subject which effectively tells the history of their family and parish.

The increasing globalisation of culture would also seem to be a factor favouring the study of history. Young people are now well-travelled and one would think they would want to know about the historical roots of the places they have visited.

While students may visit the US in droves, under the J-1 visa programme, it is a big leap from that to taking down a book about the American Civil War or the Depression.

With an obvious decline in the numbers taking the subject, one has to ask is there a problem with the students or with the course? The new syllabus, drafted by the NCCA, seems to put the blame on the current course and its narrow and arduous design. The course is, according to many historians, too long on politics and too short on social, gender, racial, economic and cultural history.

This was obvious in the years I studied the subject in the early 1990s. Covers of textbooks, incorporating large photographs of Bismarck and De Gaulle, sent out the signal that history was about the work of great statesmen towering above hapless subjects who led lives of quiet misery and poverty.

But if a student dipped inside the cover things did improve - and many teachers have contributed to high-quality textbooks with excellent layout and impeccable editing. However, the format of the Leaving Certificate paper militated against the true enjoyment of history.

Students did not discuss history over the two years of the Leaving Certificate course, but "what was likely to come up".

They could reel off various facts about Parnell in preparation for a question on his career, but could not even start to talk about his place in the overall story of Ireland's push towards independence. Many students I studied with, who did well in their exams, knew disembodied pieces of history but could not piece them together into an overall narrative.

Many hours were spent poring over previous exam papers in an attempt to predict what would come up on the big day. The permutations were mindboggling and students often learned more about statistical probability than history during these exercises.

I took the subject on my own outside school hours - without a teacher - because it clashed with another subject I wanted to do. I found that close attention to the patterns could prove more productive than spending a few hours studying the French Third Republic.

It should not have been like that, but the lack of practical research in the course meant that second-guessing those setting the paper became a prized skill. The language used in questions also spoke volumes about the classical mindset behind the subject in this period. "Treat of relations between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany during the period 1933 and 1945", was typical. The phrase "treat of" became a joke among many of us, asking our friends to "treat of" last night's disco and the girls they met.

The arming of students with historical knowledge sometimes backfired on teachers - particularly when one indignant student called his teacher a fascist demagogue. But these flashes of humour could not keep most of my fellow pupils interested in the subject when we were obliged to take it at Intermediate Certificate.

Then our brilliant teacher, Dave Hussey, tried to imbue us with a broad view of the 20th century while we laughed at the irony of an armless Michael Davitt being arrested for arms trafficking and at the student who asked was the Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi named after the biscuit.

One can only hope that the new syllabus, with its broader view of what constitutes history, will restore the subject's authority in schools.