ABSTRACT
Perhaps the hardest battle I fought on the national curriculum was about history. Though not an historian myself, I had a very clear – and I had naively imagined uncontroversial – idea of what history was. History is an account of what happened in the past. Learning history, therefore, requires knowledge of events… I was, therefore, very concerned when in December 1988 I received [Secretary of State] Ken Baker’s written proposals for the teaching of history and the composition of the History Working Group on the curriculum… His initial names included the author of the definitive work on the ‘New History’ which, with its emphasis on concepts rather than chronology and empathy rather than facts, was at the root of so much that was going wrong. Ken saw my point and made some changes. But that was only the beginning of the argument.
