Katherine Tattersall of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors has said that History could disappear as an A-Level subject. She reckons that this is because History is no longer a requirement of the national curriculum for 14- to 16-year-olds.
She also said that subjects like photography and media studies had become growth areas in the past few years because they were the kind of subjects needed for a job (Media studies do me a favour!!!!!!!).
The Department for Children, Schools and Families rejected the claim. "We don't agree that history A-level may 'become a thing of the past' - last year saw a record number of pupils taking history exams with nearly a quarter of a million entries.
"Ofsted states that it is one of the best taught subjects. Standards in history compare well with other subjects and are improving - at A-level, 75% of candidates achieved an A-C grade compared with an average for all subjects of 71%."
As regular readers will know I think an understanding of History is VERY important. If we don't know where we've come from, how will we know how existing problems evolved? We won't know of the struggles our ancestors had to achieve the many rights and privileges we take for granted today.
An understanding of History would have helped our leaders when dealing with the Iraq and Middle East problems. And closer to home the "troubles" in Ireland.
As the saying goes there is nothing new under the sun. If we don't learn from the lessons of the past we will be doomed to repeat them.
2 comments:
So true - how can we evolve and grow as a human race without our knowledge of history. It would help if some of our so called leaders knew a bit of history.
oh myy, thanks for pointing out that I used the T-word. It had slipped my mind probably because I was tired, changed it back now!
I can't believe they were gonna remove History A-Level in favour of Media Studies etc :|
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