Controversial issues

The legacy of the past and its impact on the present, as well as the process of interpretation by which accounts of the past are constructed, mean that many topics studied in history may carry an emotional charge. Certain events or developments may have a particular relevance – or resonance – for some young people and their communities, but carry different overtones (or none at all) for others. This section contains advice and resources for teachers who are tackling potentially sensitive topics that may generate emotionally charged responses and explores the issues that may arise as topics studied in the classroom intersect with personal, family and community histories. The materials here will help teachers to reflect carefully on the appropriateness of their objectives and to develop effective teaching strategies for promoting sensitive and productive kinds of discussion, especially when both the past and its implications for the present are disputed. They highlight the risks involved and the ways in which they can be mitigated, and include guidance and advice related to the Prevent Strategy.

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  • Triumphs Show: A head, a hook and international theft: getting year 9 to debate the intricacies of the impact of empire

    Article

    The draft of the revised Key Stage 3 programme of study for history brings a new prominence to the study of the British Empire. Here one department describes their triumph in enabling students to engage with a topic which could seem very distant from their own lives.

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  • Creating controversy in the classroom: making progress with historical significance

    Article

    No longer is historical significance the ‘forgotten key element.’ Indeed, it is now being remembered at last – by politicians, telly-dons and the media in any case. Matthew Bradshaw suggests that the popular emphasis on significant events is wrong. Instead, we should be enabling our pupils to make their own...

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  • Voices from Rwanda: when seeing is better than hearing

    Article

    Where were you when you last witnessed history being formed? How did you know that the events you had witnessed would turn out to be significant? The missile attack on a plane in Rwanda on 6 April 1994 passed Martyn Beer by at the time. It was later that he...

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  • A need to know: Islamic history and the school curriculum

    Article

    In this article, Nicolas Kinloch questions some of the principal justifications often advanced for teaching Islamic history in schools. In particular, he wants to move us beyond our concern with current events in the Middle East. He suggests that there are dangers in looking at Islamic history if it is...

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  • Empathy without illusions

    Article

    Empathy may have disappeared from official documents but the history teacher who does not still regularly think about it, plan for it and teach it would be hard to find. What is history if not, in part, an attempt to understand how people thought and felt in the past? This...

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  • Moral dilemmas: history teaching and the Holocaust

    Article

    The new Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London has been very favourably received by the general public, and by teachers and their students. Initially controversial - was a war museum the ideal site for such an exhibition, for example? - it has since been widely praised for...

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  • From horror to history: teaching pupils to reflect on significance

    Article

    In this detailed account of the first stages of a lesson sequence for Year 9 (13-14 year-olds), Kate Hammond sets out the tensions that must be examined and resolved when planning and teaching this most demanding of topics. How can young teenagers be helped to develop a mature response to...

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  • You are members of a United Nations Commission...' Recent world crises simulations

    Article

    David Ghere presents a teaching and learning rationale for simulations where the location is not identified. This creates a deliberately artificial situation where the student can tackle the problems and carry out the decision-making and problem-solving exercise without preconceptions. The author does not recommend leaving the activity at this stage,...

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