I’ve had this kicking about for the past couple of days. It’s from the 21st.

Telegraph - A welcome move away from Braveheart bilge. By Alan Cochrane

It is excellent news that Scottish history is to be made a compulsory component of Higher examinations and the Scottish Qualifications Authority is to be congratulated on this long-overdue move.

Normally, I’d be a bit leery of making anything compulsory in a history syllabus but given the vast amount of Braveheart bilge that passes for Scotland’s story at present and the huge misconceptions about our past, surely this move is to be widely welcomed.

It is entirely typical of the fraught nature of the nationality issue in Scotland in recent decades that something as seemingly normal as teaching schoolchildren their country’s history has been caught up in politics.

Just as they - ludicrously - conceded Scotland’s national flag, the Saltire, to the SNP and banned as a “nationalist shibboleth” the building of Scotland’s new parliament where it should have been erected, at the top of Calton Hill, so Labour’s Scottish establishment has always worried that too much Scottish history would lead to too much support for the Nats.

The result has been a vast ignorance amongst much of the younger generation about Scotland’s place in the world and its role in forging both the United Kingdom and the British Empire. …

Personally, I much preferred the view of Scotland’s main teaching union, the EIS, whose spokesman stressed that while it was important for children to learn about the wider world, it was equally important for them to have an appreciation of their own history and culture.

Scotland’s story as an independent nation and its wars with its nearest neighbour is a long, colourful one, just as is its 300-year history in a hugely successful union with that same neighbour. Children need to be aware of both tales.

Scotland, history, and the history of Scotland.

ninme sighs happily

Date: Nov 24th, 2007 · Comments RSS · Tags: History