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Niall Ferguson, the controversial Harvard academic, has been invited by the government to revitalise the popularity of history in schools.
Ferguson will work with the Conservatives to overhaul history in schools and, in an interview with the Guardian, he sets out a vision of ‘doing for history what Jamie Oliver has done for school food – make it healthy, and so they actually want to eat it’. The education secretary, Michael Gove – who invited him to design a new curriculum at the Guardian Hay festival this year – has previously praised Ferguson in a blog post for approaching ‘the legacy of the British empire with a balanced mind, accepting its manifold evils, but also ready to acknowledge its progressive side’.
Outlining some of his teaching aids, Ferguson says:
‘We need to use television. The reason I do TV is because I think it's a more accessible way of teaching. I think we also need to use games.’
 Ferguson has collaborated with a US software developer to create a second world war-based video game for use as a classroom aid, and believes role-playing would help students understand the choices that shaped history.
He continues:
‘History is more like a game than it is a novel, because you don't know, when you're in it, what the end is going to be. You can re-run world war two, you can explore strategy, you can come up with a plausible alternative past. It's exciting for young people – my teenage son and his younger brother have been my consultants on this.’
The game, entitled The War of the World, claims to bring ‘true grand strategy gaming to World War II’. The developer describes it as a chance for players to lead a nation and remake history ‘from the factories and shipyards on the home front, to epic battles across the globe’.
For instance, Ferguson says:
‘Make Churchill prime minister in 1938 and you probably end up with a war in 1938. But this individual couldn't be prime minister in 1938, he was totally unpopular.’
See below for an introduction to The War of the World:
Ferguson admits he is concerned by the declining popularity of history in schools – last year about 219,000 pupils took history at GCSE, compared with more than 300,000 who took design and technology. In order to remedy this, Ferguson believes that history needs to be made more interesting, including improving school trips by taking pupils to places which were central to history, such as battlefields and places where the experience of young people is historically interesting.
He says:
‘History books make the mistake of teaching about old men, often with a beard. Most of history is made by young people. I'm an old guy by historical standards, at 46. Child soldiers in Africa? There were lots of child soldiers in the Napoleonic wars. It's all about making history young.’
His teaching style, which he has piloted with schoolchildren in London's East End, is influenced by the conventions of television. If, for example, he were teaching the Atlantic slave trade, he would ‘tell the big picture: Brazil was more important than anywhere else [in the slave trade]. Get the big picture, then let's zoom in – what is it like to be a slave, what was it like to be a slave trader? That is the way to make history live – you constantly try to zoom in, the human face on a story, then I think you connect. Try to recapture past truth, try to reconstruct from the remains that the dead leave behind – that is the true aim of the historian, to make the past experience live again.’
However, fellow historian Antony Beevor was sceptical about Ferguson's notion of teaching history through gaming.
He said:
‘Playing counterfactual? To be perfectly honest there's more than enough you need to learn about the basic structure before you start playing counterfactual.’
What are your thoughts on this story? Is this a good way to get pupils interested in history? Do you believe Ferguson’s ideas could help students to have a deeper understanding of history and important historical figures? Or, as historian Beevor says, is it more important for pupils to know the facts before playing around with different scenarios? Log in or register for free to share your thoughts and opinions with the rest of the bee-it community. |
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Comments
Games like the Total War series expose a lot about the political strategy of the times during which they are set, the people associated with the events and the social structure as well as military strategy. Players learn a lot about Roman society or the 18th century expansion of empire even though they are essentially playing a military strategy game.
My experience in educational/training software has shown that the biggest barrier to the use of games as a delivery platform is the teaching environment. There's a whole host of technology led innovations that can provide great solutions and there are really inventive and creative individuals out there who can see the potential. But there is an even greater group of influential people out there who just don't get it.
I would think that games are the obvious place to rejuvenate history also in relation to counter-factual. Some of the concerns raised by critics are also found in the work below, and are certainly valid. One thing that I think many sceptics miss is that students are very aware of the counter-factual nature of things and hence are more critical towards what is unfolding (compared to for example textbook, teachers talks and television shows, where they take it in more raw as the facts).
Kurt Squire did some good work on Civilization in his PhD, and I also looked at Europa Universalis II for high school in my PhD.
I would be curious to see what people think of www.playinghistory.eu. It's not out yet but it is attempt to teach history to 10-13 years in a non-traditional way. It also tries to address the built-in challenges related to representing history accurately and the fact that the player can 'change' history. In the game you are allowed to primarily interact and change the 'small' history while learning about the big history. In this case the Plague. Next episode that is almost also ready is about slavetrade.
Best,
Simon
My experience has been that there is a great deal of interest amongst accademics, educationalists and teachers in the development of these techniques. We have benefited greatly form their input and been encouraged greatly by their championship of finished product. Where there is an issue, however, is that when faced with the pressures of a target led system, and a system with growing budgetary constraints, as we “enjoy” in the UK. Often a new approach will be seen as a risk when more traditional methods have delivered to target in the past.
On a commercial level. When product development is so expensive and certain subjects require such bespoke solutions there does need to be either a sizeable market or the investment in development tools that will lower the costs of providing the software.
I really like the look of this Simon, very engaging graphics and voiceovers. I think the idea of keeping the overall picture the same but with changeable smaller elements is a really intruiging prospect.
Quoting Lucia Pannese:
An interesting concept Lucia. These games remind me of the old 'point and click', 'Monkey Island-esque' games where the user chooses the questions to ask in order to find out the information required.
Quoting Lloyd Sutton:
This is my worry with some games based learning tools - are developers making technology for technology sake? The focus has to be on learning rather than playing - the game is purely a new medium of delivery but should not detract from the facts.
Quoting Lloyd Sutton:
Totally agree.
As a designer and developer of software the pressure to use certain technologies comes from teachers as much as the developers themselves. It's very easy to get caught up in real-time 3D without really looking at whether it is the right solution. And because of that sometimes the outcomes could just as well have been done in 2D and the finished 3D product proves unsatisfactory because of it. Indeed in some circumstances it might be that technology of any sort is not the solution.
Real-time 3D can immerse the "player" in a period and location in history in a way that no video or visit to the contemporary location can. It's not a substitute but it can provide a valuable experience of life, conditions and events of the time that can bring an enhanced understanding and appreciation.
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