Thus pupils might study crime and punishment, or kingship, and dip in and out of different centuries. The teaching of history in British schools is increasingly influenced by US methods of presenting the past thematically rather than chronologically.
My son's teacher confirmed that this is broadly true. "But Daddy," she protested, when I spat out my tea, "we don't learn about, like, dates." Which wouldn't have been so worrying if she hadn't been writing an essay titled The Causes of the First World War. Under interrogation, she admitted that she wasn't sure when it started, either. My anxiety was compounded by the recollection that my daughter, during her A-levels two years ago, had asked me when the first world war ended. Grudgingly, I can see that someone might possibly muddle through the 21st century without needing to state the year of the Spanish Armada, but chronology gives a framework to every human life, to all global events.
An understanding of dates, though, is important.
Anyway, this seemed far more serious than an inability to do long division, which in adulthood I have never once regretted. Whether my own dad went that far in 1975, I can't remember.
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