History and cross-curricular learning

Social studies can be the enemy of history when it is introduced, as I think it was in Alberta in the 70's, to eliminate the past dimension of understanding how people relate. Why eliminate the past? Because it's politically problematic. Because, imagine teaching a class about the First or Second World War in Alberta where most of the kids are of German heritage. This is tough. I mean, it's manageable, it would be indeed very exciting, but it can also lead to problems. And problems are things that heads, ministry officials, boards don't like...

No, I think among those who organize curricula whether at the devising level or the administering level in school, there is widespread misunderstanding of the kind of things we as teachers get up to. Too many Heads and school board people, and in my experience, even civil servants in Her Majesty's Department for Education and Employment, don't understand because they did the course of famous dead white whatevers. They had to learn it and went through the normal method of assessment at sixteen which was to write five essays in two and a half hours. It was like that then and they truly disliked it. We've failed to communicate some of the exciting things that have happened in history. What I've talked to you about in curriculum development pre-National Curriulum, is called New History, this is 1972, the Schools History Project. It's not that new.
So, yeah, there's a slight danger that we say, "Why don't you just close down your other departments and we'll do the whole curriculum for you." We're not quite making that territorial, expansionist claim yet. We do need to communicate the potential that there is within history, certainly in terms of language development, understanding all sorts of bits of other disciplines. We teach a Medicine Through Time course. Yes, for bigger claims for history, but try to draw a line somewhere, otherwise they'll think you're Napoleon or something...