London — The historical illiteracy of American schoolboys and
girls is always a rich source of jokes for the late night
television shows. Jay Leno or David Letterman can always astound
his audience by reading the result of some study that shows a
paucity of high schoolers knowing the identity of America’s first
president or the century in which World War I was fought or some
other fact that seems obvious to literate grownups. Or the
late-night smart alecks will go out on the street and interview a
pedestrian about who is buried in Grant’s tomb or some other joke
of history. His audience will guffaw even if the guffawers are
equally in the dark. Americans’ ignorance of history is alternately
amusing and alarming. Without a knowledge of history Americans are
always susceptible to the deceptions of passing demagogues.
Al Sharpton can hold up almost any canard about race and it will
go unchallenged. Opponents of a strong foreign policy can claim
anything they want about, say, the war in Vietnam, and only a
handful of Americans will know enough to refute them with the
truth. Yet there are more reasons to teach history well in the
schools than merely protecting American schoolchildren from
ridicule and the citizenry from political charlatans. Right here in
London there is a fellow intent on improving the teaching of
history in Britain, and do you know who he is? He is the Prince of
Wales, and he may have the ear of Charles Clarke, Britain’s
education minister.
Prince Charles is known for his campaigns to improve Britain as
well as for his lady friend Camilla Parker Bowles. Years ago he
went on a tear against modern architecture, disparaging its
tastelessness and ultimately its soullessness and rootlessness —
its dehumanizing effect on the citizens that perambulate around it.
“The Prince is often a decade ahead of his time,” the English
historian Andrew Roberts tells me over a very good dinner in
Mayfair. His campaign against modern architecture now has an
important following and the day may come when steel and glass will
be replaced by stone and the ornamentation that makes buildings
civilized.
I doubt it will take a decade for his campaign to improve the
teaching of history to gain an important following. Historical
writing is very popular with British readers. Such popular
historians as Roberts, Paul Johnson and Simon Schama are best
sellers and often invited to appeal on British television.
The Prince’s plan for improving the teaching of history in
schools is to conduct “summer schools” at which distinguished
historians discuss the proper teaching of history with the
country’s history teachers. Roberts attended one a week ago and
iterated the Prince’s concern that history be taught with an eye
for facts, for chronology, and for lively narrative. Roberts was in
the company of such other distinguished British historians as Niall
Ferguson and Schama. Schama had a trendier view of teaching history
but Roberts and Ferguson made the case for teaching history the
old-fashioned way with fact and story telling. Ferguson went so far
as to urge that the stories taught in British schools be exciting.
For instance, he urged the British students again be taught the
history of the British empire, a history that was discontinued in
the 1960s, out of concern that it was too Anglocentric.
Writing in last week’s Sunday Times Ferguson reminded
his readers that when students are properly taught history they
develop a “sense of civic responsibility.” And sounding a bit like
Prince Charles he added that to be ignorant of history is to be
“rootless and intellectually impoverished.” Ferguson went on to
quote from a report that the Prince’s summer school produced on
teaching history. History should impart a “sense of continuity,”
have lively and “rich narrative,” and delineate “maps of the past.”
It should encourage “an awareness of …spiritual, cultural,
moral, and social issues.” Obviously such history would not be
dominated by the trendy PC enthusiasms that oppress young minds on
both sides of the Atlantic.
Prince Charles’s public relations experts have made heavy
weather of it over the past decade. It is unfortunate that his spin
doctors can not do better. Friends of mine who know him tell me the
Prince of Wales is bright and thoughtful. His interest in
architecture and history suggests as much. I wish him luck in this
latest campaign. Perhaps he could do the princely thing and bring
it to our shores.
