Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Brocklehurst, Helen

Titel

Educating Britain? Political Literacy and the Construction of National History

Ist Teil von

• Journal of common market studies, 2015-01, Vol.53 (1), p.52-70

Ort / Verlag

Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2015

Quelle

Wiley-Blackwell Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Despite the reflexive nature of historical enquiry and the degree of national interconnectness now theorized by historians in the United Kingdom, education debates over history teaching in Britain often yield a comforting defence of Britain's ‘island story’. The singular ‘island story’ is an economical narrative device favoured by politicians and further mediated through newspapers which profit from such national cryogenics. Maintenance of a currency, or crisis, of Britishness can also be contrasted with the relative absence of longitudinal or comparative enquiry into identity and school curricula. In addition, the teaching of states, connections and post‐sovereign communities is largely under‐theorized, potentially contributing to the sterility of future debates about citizenship, agency and Britain's wider political reach. It is argued here that the public framing of history as nationhood and the underdevelopment of children's political literacy are mutually reinforcing conditions by which the state has constructed a stabilizing, yet shifting presence of the ‘national’. This article is part of the January 2015 Special Issue titled ‘Interpreting British European Policy’, which also includes Interpreting British European Policy by Mark Bevir, Oliver Daddow and Pauline Schnapper (DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12201), Safeguarding British Identity or Betraying It? The Role of British ‘Tradition’ in the Parliamentary Great Debate on EC Membership, October 1971 by N. Piers Ludlow (DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12202), The Return of ‘Englishness’ in British Political Culture – The End of the Unions? by Michael Kenny (DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12203), Interpreting the Outsider Tradition in British European Policy Speeches from Thatcher to Cameron by Oliver Daddow (DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12204), ‘One Woman's Prejudice’: Did Margaret Thatcher Cause Britain's Anti‐Europeanism? by Cary Fontana and Craig Parsons (DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12205), Between One‐Nation Toryism and Neoliberalism: The Dilemmas of British Conservatism and Britain's Evolving Place in Europe by Mark I. Vail (DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12206), Euroscepticism and the Anglosphere: Traditions and Dilemmas in Contemporary English Nationalism by Ben Wellings and Helen Baxendale (DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12207), Reworking the Eurosceptic and Conservative Traditions into a Populist Narrative: UKIP's Winning Formula? by Karine Tournier‐Sol (DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12208), The Labour Party and Europe from Brown to Miliband: Back to the Future? by Pauline Schnapper (DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12209)