i was waiting for a bus and there were some scruffling students beside me hitting each other with their history textbooks, on which covers i could see the title "living history" or "history alive," or something on those idiotic lines, which made me snort. the problem is not how to "make the dead and dry come alive" by having more "activities" or "interaction" or playing up "relevance" (oh hateful word!) which is what idiotic titles like "living history" on textbooks mean to convey, but because the policy planners, even as they're well-meaning, misunderstand fundamentally the nature of the discipline, and naturally what is taught is only kings and dates and will remain that way, because they teach no historiography, besides which what they are taught is largely political history, the history of national development, as they're now calling it, but a child in our schools never seems to consider, or care, or have ever been told by any of their teachers, or give you any inkling that they understand that everything has a history. julian and i were once complaining over tea that in our schools the students learn nothing about the methodology and principles of whichever discipline they have chosen, nor the history of the development of said discipline as discipline. they are taught science, but not the philosophy or history of science; history, but not historiography; they are taught how to solve sums, but not principles of mathematical thought; to apply formulas without understanding or even asking where those formulas come from, and why. later the same children become doctors, and are trained to treat patients, but in their training the history of medicine remains untaught. the arts students are no better - for they are taught texts, but they analyse without understanding literary theory or literary history. we ask them to prac crit an unseen poem, without asking them to understand the premises of criticism, and we don't force them to ask themselves what literature is, or what we mean by literariness, or anything of the sort. you know when confucius said 学而不思则罔，思而不学则殆. i think the trouble is that they have too much of the 学, and nothing of the 思.