Education: Narrowing horizons
The decision by Sussex University to drop research-led teaching and implement a post-1900 curriculum will produce scholars lacking in historical perspective, says Martin Evans.
On his blog and within last month’s editorial History Today’s editor Paul Lay underlined the ‘gloom that has descended upon history departments throughout Britain’. It was a timely intervention, mirrored by letters and articles in the Daily Telegraph, that has rightly provoked an immediate debate on the History Today website because, from the vantage point of 2010, the state of the profession does not look good. All the talk is of cuts, redundancies and rationalisation. ‘More for less’ is the management buzz phrase.
Of course no one is saying that the world owes historians a living. We need to engage with the world around us, to communicate with as wide an audience as possible. Nor can we ignore the banking meltdown that has put so much pressure on public-sector budgets.
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