Gove's bashing of "left wing" historians is a sad indication on how he views history

The UK's Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, has been in the news lately for complaining about left wing academics and their insufficiently "patriotic" version of the First World War, which feed into a likewise unhappy media image:

"Our understanding of the war has been overlaid by misunderstandings, and misrepresentations which reflect an, at best, ambiguous attitude to this country and, at worst, an unhappy compulsion on the part of some to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage.

The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles - a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite. Even to this day there are Left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths."

It's interesting that pointing out the failures of the military leadership of the war is equated with denigrating the courage of those who fought - the very phrase lions led by donkeys is meant to highlight their courage in contrast to the leadership - and it almost seems like Gove's definition of "patriotism" is loyalty to the elite. Question the soundness of General Haig's strategy of repeatedly making soldiers walk slowly across open ground towards machine-gun fire? Clearly you have little love for the troops or Britain.

More worrying is the approach taken to academia. Debating the history and the merits of generals or the justness of the war is a good thing - and critical thinking and discussion needs to be encouraged. But using politics as a shorthand to exclude arguments is sloppy and wrong. This is the man responsible for the education system calling academics "left wing" to imply that they and their academic work is untrustworthy and biased. Are papers on history published in academic journals by authors with left wing political views less reliable or worthwhile simply because of their political views? Of course, this "left wing" view of history isn't necessarily reserved to the left. Notably, Oh! What a Lovely War is inspired by a book by a Conservative MP.

If Gove personally distrusts the work of historians simply because it appears to have, in his opinion, a left wing bias or because it finds itself at odds with the government's aims (or the war propaganda at the time), then that's his business. But it's a poor basis for teaching history or commemorating the war.

The Confused Ideology of the EBacc

UK Education Secretary Michael Gove has announced that the GCSEs (the exams sat at the end of comulsory secondary education at 16) will be replaced by a new English Baccalaureate qualification:

"From the autumn of 2015, pupils will be taught for the new EBacc in English, maths and science. These will cover seven papers: English language, English literature, maths pure and applied (with an additional maths option), chemistry, physics and biology.

The new exam will be sat for the first time in these subjects in the summer of 2017. There will be no coursework in English and maths as modules are scrapped on the grounds that they encourage what Gove described as "bite-size learning and spoon-feeding". There will be some coursework in science to take account of the importance of laboratory work.

From 2016, pupils will be taught for the new EBacc in history, geography and languages. Pupils will sit the exams in the summer of 2018. There will be no coursework for history. Field trips will still count in geography and there will be flexibility on oral exams for languages."

The  aim is to restore credibility to the exam system by making exams harder and lessening or removing coursework altogether. I'm not sure what "flexibility on oral exams for languages" is supposed to mean, since surely speaking the language should be a central plank of learning it rather than an accommodation as an afterthought.

What's striking about the changes is the confused ideology behind them. Qualifications are meant to show how, well, qualified you are in a subject or a skillset, and the grading system is meant to separate people on the basis of ability. While it's a good idea to have a new name for a harder system to prevent unfair comparisons with the generation of students who did not have to face the tougher exams, the narrow focus on "tougher exams" misses the point on whether or not this system would equip students with the knowledge and skills needed in life and in the workplace.

It's a fact of life that in any education system students are going to be taught to pass the exams, so does this approach to examination and achieving qualifications help students get the skills they need? Probably not. If the module system is done away with, then the focus switches to memory skills as students have to reguriatate everything they know on a subject in 2 hours. This encourages cramming for exams, rather than the wider use of skills to research a topic and deal with in depth that coursework can provide the opportunity for. And rather than simply "spoon feeding", coursework is an opportunity for students to learn how to use the resources around them and apply them to the task at hand - after all, employers don't expect their employees to sit at their desk struggling to remember things that they crammed for a few years ago when information is so freely available.

It's hard to escape the sense that Gove just fetishises the toughness of exams. Why not make coursework more challenging if that's the problem? Learning as you go through the GCSE - or EBacc - years helps to bed down skills and knowledge and is more likely to be useful in the workplace rather than depending on a one-off retelling of what has been learnt over the year. I know I found continuous assessment more challenging than a pure examination system, since more work was required throughout the year (plus I've probably got a personality that benefits more from exams).

It's ironic that the Tory party that has distained the idea that 50% of the population should go to university should be working to make the secondary education system as narrowly and traditionally academic as possible.