Leader: History is much more than dates

How can it be when schools are reporting record pass rates in exams that so many youngsters are still leaving school knowing so little?

This is particularly true of history where a generation of children are being disconnected from their culture and heritage.

And as they do not know the background of where they came from, they do not really know who they are. It is a lack of a sense of belonging and shared ownership which sows the seeds of a dysfunctional society.

A Cambridge University professor has come up with 31 key events in British history that all teenagers should study and has also called for a revamp of the exam system to reward originality and insight rather than simple memorising of dates.

Yesterday we reported on the forthcoming auction of an original "Wanted" poster for the fugitive King Charles II who famously hid in the branches of a Shropshire oak. Had he been discovered he would have been executed as a traitor.

This would conceivably have meant the end of the British monarchy and the emergence of a very different Britain, perhaps one without imperial ambitions, and one without the power or will to stand up to Fascism in the 20th century.

Everything we are today has been shaped by our history which makes it such a shame when it is taught in a dreary, perfunctory fashion.

Rote learning of key dates is good for quizzes, but history is not just about dates, but about the context, attitudes, and atmospheres of times.

A favourite phrase of politicians these days is that their opponents will be "on the wrong side of history".

When politicians are trying to monopolise history like that, it is as good a reason as any for ordinary folk to seize ownership back.