David Aaronovitch - Times Online - WBLG

A blast from the Callaghanite past. A reader writes......

This was sent to me by an old comrade, name of Charlie Wood..................

"Hi Dave, we last met at the CP students caucus at the NUS conference in 1979. I recollect you sat cross legged on the table half asleep whilst Sally Hibbin went through the amendments in her role as student organiser, it seems like another world does'nt it??. I would be delighted if you would permit your many readers to read my blog 'An Unrepentant Communist'
http://unrepentantcommunist.blogspot.com/ which shows that at least one of us in that room has not altered their views as much as you have, (which of course is no claim to being right !!). Nevetheless I still would like to keep an old fashioned CP -type flag flying in the blogosphere and perhaps a post on your blog may help.."

And here it is.

The lessons of history? That’s a lot of bunk

It is good to know that, by the time summer’s rains give way to autumn’s hurricanes, what Xenophilius Lovegood had to say to a scar-faced boy wizard concerning the Resurrection Stone and the Elder Wand will be informing the actions of our Liberal Democrat MPs. It feels more reassuring, however, that Tory MPs were planning – less demotically but more virtuously – to plough through William Hague’s biography of William Wilberforce. Don’t you agree that it is so important that our rulers should have a proper sense of history?

Now substitute the word “physics” for “history” in all those sentences that seem to appear four or five times a week, uttered by this academic or that think-tank, and lamented over by columnists and leader writers. Is it vital that every child should have a grounding in physics? Is it necessary that every senior politician should have a keen understanding of physics? Is the operation of the physical world an essential part of comprehending the world we live in? Is it heck as like.

Is the physics curriculum too narrow? Is it repetitive? Is it well taught? Do pupils give up physics too early? Who knows? But everyone with more than two GCSEs and a humanities degree to rub together has an opinion on the teaching of, and learning from, history.