History and citizenship

The Roman economy at work in 21st century Exeter History is an irreplaceable resource for critically examining the human condition and the ways in which societies work. Through history, you can lead children to understand why people act as they do, and to appreciate and respect those who lived in the different, foreign country of the past. As such, history makes a crucial contribution to citizenship education, in that it can help pupils to understand and respect our common humanity and diversity, and can provide the conceptual means to make sense of their lives.

The programmes of study for history provide the imaginative teacher with many opportunities for fostering citizenship. The skills, concepts and processes involved in learning history can help to develop thoughtful, principled and confident citizens

Citizenship opportunities
Good history teaching will offer many opportunities for young children to start developing the knowledge, understandings, attitudes and values essential for citizenship.

Specifically, learning history can result in children developing a sense of:
• identity - through developing knowledge and understanding of self and others and their place in the community
• security - through understanding change over time
• tolerance - through a respect for, and acceptance of, difference
• discrimination/judgement - through developing a critical attitude to opinion and a respect for evidence.
(With thanks to Peter MacNamara).

Medium and message
Teachers have a powerful role in ensuring that all children feel included, that they feel that they, their beliefs and their culture, are respected. Such respect is a crucial component of their development as people and as citizens. In other words, telling children what democratic citizenship is will not help produce good citizens on its own.

The teaching must be underpinned by democratic principles, that is, an ethos based on the principles of respect for pupils, of their autonomy and of justice.

The most powerful learning combines experience (doing) with cognitive challenge that encourages children actively to question, to speculate, to debate and to listen (thinking), within a secure, safe and fair environment. Within such an ethos citizenship values can be practised.

Societies different from their own
Children will be much better helped to develop as citizens with a respect for diversity, and tolerance for others' attitudes and beliefs, if they are also encouraged to understand and respect societies different from their own in time as well as place. Such understanding needs to be from the perspective of those past people (that is, understanding from the inside) as well as from our perspective now.

Key moral concepts
At primary school, what are the key moral concepts that children need to grasp in order to develop into good citizens? They need:
• to understand that 'different' does not mean 'inferior'
• to appreciate that we are all worthy of being valued
• an understanding that we have shared human needs.

In the Ancient Greeks case study Citizenship in Ancient Greece, we addressed these concepts.

Opening children's minds
Good citizenship education challenges prejudice and stereotypes. In 1993 HMI John Slater wrote a compelling chapter in defence of history in the curriculum. He argued that history is a mind-opening subject, because historical evidence can be interpreted in many different ways. This means that:

"... Historical statements are tentative and provisional. Historical thinking explores, but rarely reaches destinations. It examines but does not solve problems. History cannot claim to offer complete knowledge or total understanding. History asserts the status of doubt. But it is neither value-free nor politically neutral. As history challenges stereotypical thinking and prejudice, it is unlikely to flourish in authoritarian societies or to be welcomed by closed minds. If historical thinking does not seek to support or establish a liberal democratic society, it is certainly one of its symptoms." (Slater, 1993, pp. 116-17)

Challenging pre-conceptions
As we examine historical sources with children we learn to appreciate the range and richness of past cultures. Such appreciation can challenge the prejudice and stereotypical thinking that undermine good citizenship and a fair society. Even the youngest children can be challenged in this way.

Life in Ancient Rome
For example, when we taught the Romans to a mixed Reception/Year 1 class, we first demonstrated how long ago the Romans had lived, by taking one step down the hall for each generation, and then sketched out how Rome had grown. We asked the children what they thought Rome had been like. The answers ranged from ‘mud huts’ to ‘crumbly’ and ‘dirty’. Stereotypes about the past were already firmly in place!

In response we projected a picture - Sorrell’s reconstruction of Rome - onto the hall wall. The children’s jaws dropped. We invited them to look hard at the picture and tell us what similarities and differences with today they could see. For the first five or ten minutes the similarities were all they noticed (‘That looks like the bank my Mummy gets money from,’ and so on). After they had explored the similarities and differences fully, we had a fruitful discussion that helped the children to realize that continuity can go back a very long way and that we have learnt much from sophisticated people in the past.

Viking life and culture
Similarly, when we taught the Vikings to a Year 5/Year 6 class the second lesson involved group enquiries into various aspects of Viking life and culture. One group investigated the skills of Viking craftsmen and women. Among their sources was a picture of stages in the production of a Viking bone comb. We asked the children to list the skills needed to make it.

Here are some pictures of Viking bone combs
Bone and antler work
Comb construction

Here is what Rebecca wrote about these combs.
In her final sentence, we see Rebecca’s appreciation of the cleverness of the Vikings. At the end of the afternoon, each group presented their findings to the rest of the class. We ended with a discussion where the children demonstrated a mature appreciation of the richness and variety of Viking culture and achievements (while not condoning all their actions).

It is attitudes such as these that we wish children to bring to their encounters with all other cultures, not only in the past, but crucially in the present too. As teachers we can model to children how to appreciate, listen to, understand and argue about those who are different from ourselves. History provides an unrivalled resource for the modelling of such attitudes and dispositions, essential elements of citizenship in a democracy.