Tories Reach Across the Chamber

And pick up Simon Schama. That is correct. In the new spirit of centrism and 'middle of the road politics' (and Schama's work is nothing if not that) the government have ditched the neo-imperialist and neo-nonservative Niall Ferguson for the errr. Third Way, neo-conservative Simon Schama! Good riddance to him. Niall Ferguson is a right-wing polemicist and a Washington Consensus stooge-not a historian. Aside from his dissertation he has only published half a dozen or so articles and around 2 monograms during his entire 20 year career.

Schama by contrast, was once a historian of some promise. However, all of that has now faded, leaving a pseudo-journalistic husk, reading (and watching) his latest efforts is rather reminiscent of what I'd imagine gonzo journalism to be like if spewed out by Polly Toynbee or Will Huton. In short, he is no historian either.

Granted both men have done a lot to transmit historical knowledge to the lay audience. However, it is clear that neither man (unlike members of a previous generation such as A.J.P. Taylor or Hugh Trevor-Roper or even E.H. Carr) has a real feel for or love of the profession or the past, merely the money that a TV series and spin-off book/articles can bring. In short neither of them are who we want to design a curriculum for those aged 4-14. Granted, history for youngsters should inspire in them a sense of nation and national/cultural identity. Personally I cannot see how Niall Ferguson, the man who described the Third Reich as 'an equal opportunities employer' and expressed the view that Africa would be better off as a series of American colonies rather than independent nations. In short the views of a politician, a think-tankiter, or a copy-hack, not the considered measured views of an academic. It is seriously worrying that Michael Gove ever considered letting such a fellow lose upon the National Curriculum, as appalling as it is. And we must be thankful that they (no doubt under Liberal Democrat pressure) replaced the tubthumper with the popinjay. At least Schama once had a sense of life for the ordinary person and a certain sympathy for people of all ideological shades and those from all levels of the social comedy, and he retains to this day a reasonable sense of what is a good story.

Still it seems to me that getting a celebrity "historian" to design a history syllabus is every bit as much a gimmick as getting a celebrity chef to design a school canteen's menu. In fact it is possibly worse. If a kid doesn't like a meal they won't eat it-not a bad thing. By contrast exposure to a poor history curriculum can lead to people developing a warped sense of their culture and society and the cultures and societies of others. We have enough problems as it is with ahistorical citizens and an ahistorical society, a society which is ever weakened by the fact it has no conception of its past and its ontology. Why add to them by feeding growing children with the historical equivalent of turkey twizzlers, which is what Doctor's Ferguson and Schama purvey?