The English Examining Boards: Their route from independence to government outsourcing agencies

32

This dismissive attitude is stoutly challenged by Richard Aldrich (Aldrich 2000b) and
acknowledged by Gary McCulloch. (McCulloch 2000) The latter advocates returning
to what he terms the ‘public past’ as exemplified by R H Tawney’s many
contributions in the Manchester Guardian, in place of the ‘official past’ as presented
in reports from Hadow to Crowther, and the ‘private past’ in the form of school-day
memories as summoned up by James Callaghan, Kenneth Baker and Margaret
Thatcher among others. In his 1994 analysis of the legacy of the 1944 Education Act,
McCulloch also defended education history against other critiques:

Sometimes, it appears that...history is despised or overshadowed because it
represents the ‘problem; whereas the future represents the ‘solution’. In these
circumstances, it is especially crucial to develop a greater awareness of the
relevance of the historical dimension in understanding contemporary dilemmas.
(McCulloch 1994: 3)

In a more recent work, he sees the role of the education historian as communicating to
“the public domain at large", and providing “independent and informed critiques
which will challenge received orthodoxies and stimulate debate" (McCulloch 2000:
16). This last position is the one this study has attempted to adopt. McCulloch does
not see such analyses as neutral:

To view such processes at work must raise worrying questions about the
detachment of even the most refined historical scholarship. But it underlines the
importance of acknowledging and grappling with the importance of history in
education policy; for if we do not, its influence, unremarked, will be insidious
and unchallenged. (McCulloch 1994: 68)

In attempting to establish the public past of the examining boards, it will be useful to
bear in mind the advice of two historians who have adopted the very public medium
of television history. David Cannadine, echoing Bernard Bailyn’s earlier critique,
warned against “temporal parochialism" and the notion that “the only time is now"
(Carmadine 2002). Simon Schama defended “the unfolding of a story" as the
appropriate method of presenting history - as opposed to Will Hutton’s preference for

<<   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   >>

More intriguing information