However imaginative and enquiring classroom history may be, the history itself is usually constructed by a historian, a textbook author or a teacher. It is rare that pupils gain the opportunity to construct original histories of their own. Oral history can offer this opportunity. Yet as a methodology, oral history has so many dangers and limitations, that some may question its position in the key stage 3 classroom. Chris Edwards and the department at Stoke Newington decided that these very obvious dangers could actually be turned to good advantage in a project on yob culture. Not only are pupils given the opportunity to construct their own histories, conducting original research from local sources, but they also become immediately critical of their own source. Furthermore, a school citizenship project is given a full and rounded context enabling the pupils themselves to discover a primary purpose of history as a discipline.