ABSTRACT
In the early years of the new National Curriculum it is worthwhile to recall the advice given to history teachers by Lord Eustace Percy who, as President of the Board of Education, fmally laid to rest the first national curriculum in 19261. Handing over the curriculum to the teaching profession he urged history teachers in particular to exercise their new classroom powers cautiously. 'Thought will, in the long run', he said, 'be valued only by those who have been discouraged early from jumping at conclusions and from letting imagination run too far ahead of knowledge.'2 Sixty-two years later, Kenneth Baker's Education Reform Act restored central control over the curriculum. The first draft of the new history National Curriculum published in December 1990 carried a similar health warning. The programmes of study and attainment targets were designed to ensure that history teaching avoided the 'undisciplined use of the imagination' and was based upon 'a solid foundation of historical information'. 3 It is tempting to say that the more things change the more they remain the same but most pupils in our schools today, who have been trained by their teachers in the skills of subjecting such general statements to critical analysis, would recognise the difference in the positions. In recent years the acquisition of historical information and understanding has been undertaken as part of training in historical method. As the history working group pointed out in its recommendations to the Education Secretary in April 1990,
To have integrity, the study of history must be grounded in a thorough knowledge of the past; must employ rigorous historical method - the way in which historians carry out their task; and must involve a range of interpretations and explanations. Together, these elements make an organic whole; if anyone of them is missing the outcome is not history.4
