….I was recently reading the current issue of BBC History magazine, and in particularly the regular series of ‘My History Hero’ where a guest writer gets the opportunity to put forward their thoughts about an individual historical figure. This month’s guest was Simon Jenkins, writer, editor, and chairman of The National Trust and he chose William Hogarth for historical profile..

…Many of the contributors tend to provide a few sentences ‘in defence of history.’ However, my attention was drawn to Jenkin’s concluding remarks, as they appeared to offer one of the better examples.  Firstly, According to Jenkin’s, he became interested in history because he liked ‘stories’ and regards the “narrative as the most comprehensible way of understanding the world, rather than through the medium of ideas and abstractions.”

Secondly, Jenkin’s finishes off his article with this conclusion…..“For any community to be confident in itself, to be able to understand what makes it a community, what binds it together, what differentiates it from other communities, other countries, is a sense of identity. There is no such thing as a sense of identify unrelated to history. You cannot envisage your future as a group of people if you cannot envisage your past. I’ve always found it absolutely extraordinary that the two subjects east rated in the curriculum, geography and history, are to my mind absolutely fundamental to the psychology of human communities. A knowledge of history has top underpin our sense of who we are.”

BBC History Magazine, Vol 9, No 12, December 2008. p.98.

…Now, I am aware that this maybe treading on old ground but perhaps look at it as resurrecting a prevalent and, as yet, undetermined theme of historical study. Although i have some small reservations about the first quote, the second quote  pretty much mirrors my own opinions, although articulated much more eloquently and succinctly than me!!. The sentence regarding the constant devaluing of history as a school subject in England is one aspect firmly rooted in my own consciousness. This in light of the fact that there is yet another government backed effort to de-value the teaching of history in our schools going on right now. This simply appals me for the very same reasons that Jenkins has pointed out in the second quote.

So, would anyone care to comment on these observations or thoughts?

All the best……..AoO…