Writer and broadcaster says teaching about the past must not be a way of making people feel good about themselves
Britain’s relationship with history is “not fit for purpose”, according to a leading historian who said too many pupils are still taught a “dishonest version” of the nation’s past that left out uncomfortable truths.
“We are becoming, perhaps already are, a nation for whom the history that we have and the relationship with history that prevails, is not fit for purpose,” Olusoga told the conference in Birmingham.“If history is a soft play area, there is no place for histories that explain how we all came to be here on these islands together, because those histories cannot be enjoyed purely as recreation, they cannot always be heroic.
“We’re comfortable with the story of abolition but we’re not comfortable with the story of two and a half centuries of slave trading that necessitated abolition. We’re comfortable talking about the Indian railways but much less comfortable talking about the famines … that also took place in that same country.”throughout the Windrush affair showed “the active damage the ignorance of history can do”.
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