Mr Chips With Everything?

According to Dr Nicholas Tate, Chief Executive of the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 'the transmission of an established account of the past' has ceased to be a primary purpose of school history lessons. To Dr Tate this is something to be lamented, and over recent months he has used his position to reintroduce issues of history teaching to the arena of public debate. Summarised briefly, Tate wishes to engage education more explicitly with the enterprise of cultural reproduction. Looking back to the first thirty years of this century, he identities history textbooks as being primarily involved in communicating a unified vision of national identity. Indeed, Tate sees much to admire in these pre-war school- books, particularly their concern with strong narrative and their taken-for-granted affinity towards a mainstream national heritage based upon a canon of recurring stories about figures and events from the past – stories like 'Alfred and the Cakes'.