Rewriting History

When the poet Benjamin Zephaniah recently stated that Black and Asian students in the UK are only told ‘half the story’ in the study of history, he inadvertently contributed to the long-standing debate that has lingered not only in the ivory towers, but also at the heart of society. Having famously turned down his OBE on the basis that “Empire evokes slavery, brutality, and oppression” and holding republican views have been referred to in the past as ‘Anti-British’, Zephaniah’s comments should be welcomed in that they illuminate some of the most pressing challenges of our generation – particularly relating to identity, citizenship and the role of public institutions today.

Such comments provide an opportunity to understand how history operates. Though Zephaniah’s argument is by no means novel, it does contribute to a much wider debate on how Europe should deal with it’s imperial past, particularly within multi-racial and multi-ethnic societies. Should the history of Empire be premised on negative notions of guilt and salvation, or exude a forceful triumphalism? Indeed, the former has been characterised through a wealth of post-colonial literature, particularly from scholars such as Catherine Hall and Edward Said, whose work illustrates the subjugation of colonial subjects by European Imperial structures in ways that are almost alien to students of History today. 

 Conversely, latter polemics of Empire, probably best asserted through Niall Ferguson, construct an image of ‘Imperium’ as a revolutionary force, while being somewhat apathetic towards illuminating the tribulations of it’s victims. The conflicts of ideology evident in post-colonial scholarship provide an extremely difficult environment for our public education institutions, particularly those providing secondary education, to teach things like the history of Empire. 

Yet, rather than scholarship itself, the structure of history teaching at public institutions may perpetuate the problems Zephaniah speaks of. Most students who studied history as a GCSE or A level subject are likely to agree that their experience of the subject remained somewhat confined to specific periods, with a practice reduced to approved textbooks. 

Indeed, students who have gone on to study History in university will note how academic research methods vastly contrast with the neatly boxed narratives of the curriculum-based system. Indeed, one could argue that the latter actively encourages historical events to be both generalised and arbitrarily defined to meet the approved standard of Education bureaucrats. This is not to say that history teaching formulates within an ideological paraxis, but rather that a restraining cirricula provides little capacity for critical thought against historical generalisations. 

 

Further, the comments also address a root problem in historical scholarship that many – not least, Niall Ferguson – have warned about; the dialogue between universities and public schools is extremely weak. 

Addressing the Cambridge Union in 2009, Ferguson laid a humorous, yet savage attack on the academic community in failing to bring their research outside of the university. The result was not only that children in public schools failed to receive a vicarious and wide-ranging historical education, but also that many students left school feeling disenfranchised with history itself. This point is extremely crucial if we consider the large amount of poor and ethnic minority children within our public education system today. 

 

Zephaniah’s comments ultimately highlight two problems. First, the dangers of an ideologically driven history should be heeded, particularly by the current education secretary, Michael Gove. More important however, is the danger of university departments failing to engage with the wider public. Such introversion reduces history to textbooks written by untrained historians directed by political bureaucrats, which will ultimately marginalise all school pupils.