Talking about ‘first-order’ historical concepts, by which I mean ideas such as empire and invasion, civilization, power and authority has always been a central part of the discourse surrounding school history. But recently it has taken on a new life, largely due to the heightened status ascribed to it by OFSTED.
Their detailed commentary on school history published in 2021 devoted a lot of time to this issue and you don’t need to read many deep dive reports to see that OFSTED’s ideas are made real as soon as inspectors in the field ask how these concepts are being taught. You might think there is nothing wrong in this; how could we not want pupils to better understand these concepts?
After all, if they can’t grasp them much of the meaning of what they study will pass them by. I’m not convinced. Let me explain why.
It’s all well and good to tell schools they ought to be teaching these first-order historical concepts on a regular basis, but the question is when and in what context. Even deciding what they are is problematic. Nobody would suggest that pupils should have a detailed understanding of scores of these, but how many
