This blog is a primer for my upcoming post on thinking about progression in history. You can find the main post HERE.

Linear progression models have dominated the way we talk about progression in history for many years now. Once upon a time, they were an odd perversion created by the mis-use of National Curriculum levels, but now they are absolutely everywhere, infiltrating everything from A Level to GCSE.

Linear progression models attempt to create a series of steps which pupils must climb in order to improve at a subject. In maths for example, pupils might begin to understand the concept of angles and their relationships to straight lines by looking at how angles on a straight line add up to 360 degrees, then moving on to deal with angles on parallel lines, and so on. In maths this has the potential to work because there are clear steps for pupils to take to improve in their knowledge of angles and lines.

In history the situation is quite different. Linear progression models, such as those used by many schools up until the abolition of the National Curriculum level descriptors, were generally based on the idea that students could improve through a focus on their second-order understanding, rather than knowledge; that is to say, the ways in which we understand history, for example through our understanding of significance, cause, or change. See the example below:

So buried in amongst the tax tweaks, smoke and mirrors of today's budget announcement is a major statement from the government about the future of education in England. George Osbourne (yes the Chancellor, not the Secretary of State for Education) has announced that all schools will need to have left Local Authority control and have become academies between 2020 and 2022. There are many reasons to be wary of such a change, but I really want to focus in on one of those here: the loss of the National Curriculum.

As academies have the freedom to set their own currciulum and are not bound by the nationally agreed document, the movement of all schools to become academies means an end to over two decades of government-set curriculum. "Good!" you may cry. But actually I am not sure it is all that good. Like it or not, the National Curriculum has done an awful lot of good to British education, as well as the more widely publicised negative impacts. The reason it does some good is mainly down to the fact that it balances out other pressures which the government puts on educations, notably the drive to produce ever improving exam results (but not have more people passing).

You may remember that between 2010 and 2014 there was an enourmous fuss made as Michael Gove and the education people (or otherise - you decide) in Whitehall attempted to re-work and re-write the various statutory frameworks for study. History of course was famously controversial, with a list of content which initial looked like it had been dreamed up by a drunken Nigel Farage on a bender at the Premier Inn with David Starkey and Nial Ferguson. Yet the thing which was always striking about these reforms, was that the academies Gove created did not have to follow this curriculum at all. Why then go to all that trouble if some schools could just ignore the results? Indeed, some schools who became academies were also some of the worst for teaching a narrow, C20th heavy history curriculum. With academy status they had no need to change. Indeed, they were even permitted to continue using National Curriculum Levels if they so chose (and many did!). But at the moment, this is intertia, already there are some major and worrying changes to the curriculua of academies which are setting a potential future trend for English education. The National Curriculum was far from perfect, but it did (and currently does) enshrines a number of principles which may risk being lost if academies continue to be allowed to plough their own curricular furrows. For the purposes of brevity I just want to deal with two of these.

Richard White's "Remembering Ahanagran" is a book which I have been unable to put down. At times witty and amusing and at other times deeply moving, White tells the story of his mother's early life and emigration to the United States through her own memories, gathered over a lifetime. 

"Lives are not stories. A day, a month, a year, or a lifetime has no plot. Our experiences are only the raw stuff of stories...We turn our lives into stories, and, in doing so, we...[give our] lives a coherence that the day-to-day lives of our actual experience lack."

One one level, White helps us to get a glimpse into the intimate stories of his family and shows us the strangeness of the world they inhabited. We see the impact of British policy in Ireland, we feel the social stigma attached to mixed marriages, we appreciate how people were both driven by the own desires but also controlled by factors outside their control. I was particularly drawn in by the detailed focus on the construction and reconstruction of ordinary lives. White is by no means glorifying the life his mother led, however, he shows it to be of the same interest and importance as so many other "famous lives" which have of course received far more attention. He demonstrates this beautifully when talking about the house in which his mother spent her early years in the USA.

"There are no histories of Chicago in which 6420 South Mozart Street...matters very much...But for Sara, Chicago always existed in relation to South Mozart Street. And all of America existed in relation to Chicago. South Mozart Street, where she started and ended her day, was the center of America."

On a different level, the book is also a history of the United States in the early 20th century. The characters of the story, whilst very ordinary, are also touched by the major events of the time. During Prohibition illegal stills are kept in the basement. When the Great Depression arrives its toll on the immigrant Americans can be seen. The racial tensions in the South also receive mention as do the corrupt legal systems of Chicago which find themselves in thrall to the Irish gangs. Towards the end of the book, themes of anti-Semitism and racism tinge the story, whilst the War throws the lives of the characters into disarray. If nothing else, the book is well worth a read to see how these "great" events impacted on the lives of everyday people. It is a story about what it means to be American and how American identity has been shaped.

Finally, and most importantly, "Remembering Ahanagran" is something of a historiography. The memories of White's mother are the raw materials of the book, however White has taken a very different approach to this. Much of the book sees him discussing and dealing with the gulf which exists between the memories of his mother and the evidence he can find historically. He begins by outlining the tensions between memory, story-telling and history.

"I once though of my mother's stories as history...Then I became an historian, and after many years I have come to realize that only careless historians confuse memory and history. History is the enemy of memory. The two stalk each other across the fields of the past, claiming the same terrain."

In every aspect, White compares his mother's memories and stories with the evidence he can find. In most cases there are huge tensions between the two version of the past and the book deals with how these might be reconciled. This is often a difficult process, and on more than one occasion it is clear that White's mother is not entirely happy with the direction the book is taking, she would rather keep the version of history she has created for herself. However White persists and the most fascinating aspect of the book is how White deals with these tensions and how he attempts to construct a history from the fragments. This is one of the most brilliant and eloquent explanations of the historical method I have read. It is like picking up White's thoughts and notes as much as it is a finished book. He also clearly struggles with his own memories of his mother and father as these are challenged by the evidence.

I think my favourite aspect of the book has been, what White would term, its anti-memoir quality. There is no attempt here to construct simple stories with simple meanings. Every aspect of Sara Walsh's life story is scrutinised. In many cases the result is complex and the result seems strange. But as White notes:

"Any good history begins in strangeness. The past should not be comfortable. The past should not be a familiar echo of the present...The past should be so strange you wonder how you and the people you know and love could come from such as time..."

Ultimately the book feels like a discussion, a conversation about the past and how and why we construct it. It is a brilliant way to get thinking about the historical method and a highly recommended read to really get you thinking about what it means to be an historian and what the role of history should be. It also asks us to consider the meaning of historical significance, taking seemingly innocuous events and showing the enormous shadows they cast over the lives of the people in the book. White also demands that we think about the nature of time itself. He shows how some stories occur in ordinary time, whilst others, such as those of the heroes of The Troubles, take place in a "monumental time", where lives and deaths can span centuries instead of decades. Of course, ultimately the question of historical truth is raised. The conclusion on this is far from clear cut. The themes of the book are universal, they ask us to consider the merits and dangers of memory, and the shortcomings of History as a discipline. This book has not always been a simple read, but it has been absolutely riveting. I am not sure I have done it justice here but I cannot recommend it highly enough. I will finish with one last quote (from a book I could quote every second page of).

"Memory is a living thing vulnerable to a dead past until memory itself dies with its creator... History is a dead thing brought to new life. It is fragments of the past, dead and gone, resurrected by historians...It threatens our versions of ourselves."