History books first published in the 1930s have been revived in a bid to tackle schoolchildren’s ignorance of Britain’s past.
by Julie Henry
The series, called A History of Britain, was first published in 1937 and was widely used in schools for decades.
It has now been updated and relaunched for a modern audience amid growing concerns that schools are failing to give children a good grasp of history.
It comes as a group of leading history experts called for reform to the school curriculum so secondary schoolchildren are taught a single chronological history course, stretching from the Norman conquest to the 20th century.
Currently, pupils study topics such as the Nazis, Soviet Russia, slavery or the Victorians, often taught in isolation and repeated in different years.
According to the publishers, the 1930s books are needed to address a “crisis” in the teaching of the traditional narrative of British history.
“For more than half a century most intelligent youngsters in Britain have grown up to live in the half-darkness of historical ignorance,” said Tom Stacey, chairman of Stacey International.
“I have seen this ignorance creeping up on three generations. I count their loss as incalculable deprivation. There has been a parallel discarding of the fabric of biblical history and the Christian narrative.”
NOTE: Just exactly what does Mr. Stacey think the British National Party has been saying for the last decade or so? — Ed.
He said that traditional history had “all but vanished” in schools, replaced by a diet of “projects on slavery, Victorian slums, the labour movement or, again and again, the Second World War”.