The then education secretary Michael Gove’s reimaging of the History curriculum met widespread opposition from historians.
“The Royal Historical Society, senior members of the British Academy, the higher education group History UK and the Historical Association have all made public their objections on the letters page of the Observer.
Overly Anglocentric, highly prescriptive and quite dull is the thrust of their judgment. It fails, they say, to recognise that learning about the past of other cultures away from our shores is “as vital as knowledge of foreign languages to enable British citizens to understand the full variety and diversity of human life”. Children will be deprived of knowledge of the “vast bulk” of the precious past by its narrow horizons, they say.”
Read it in full: Old school and old-fashioned’: historians turn their fire on Gove (The Guardian, 16 Feb 2013)