The Decline of History as a Tool of Moral Training

Abstract

Moral education for many years been one of most talked-about school topics in English-speaking world; there been a profusion of studies on various approaches to teaching morality or promoting development. During years that this interest flourished, few curriculum areas were less evident in popular talk about education than history. While historians have shown a continuing interest in role and status of their field in general education,' many historians recently have lamented current decline of historical studies.2 A century and less ago status of history was different. Then it was seen as one of school subjects more conducive to training of young people, and it held a correspondingly important position in curriculum. In America, training in morals was listed as one of primary reasons for teaching history.3 In Britain, history was identified as the nursery of patriotism and public virtue.4 In New Zealand acquisition of moral strength resulting from . . . contemplation of motives and conduct of men and women of heroic mould and of great deeds and mighty movements was included among benefits to be gained by students from study of history in secondary schools. Something must account for present divergence of two curricular areas that previously were associated so closely. Why did interest in history fall off precisely at a time when interest in education continued to run high? Several recent education critics hold that history is being suppressed as part of apparatus of cultural hegemony through which consciousness of population is controlled. In this view, it is not just relative decline of but also sort of history which still is taught in schools-particularly that included in social studies courses-which serve as instruments of social control whereby students are led to an uncritical perspective on social and cultural structures. Uncritical history, Clarence Karier noted, has come to dominate much of social studies curriculum in American public schools.6 History of this sort. according to Kieran Egan, constitutes