I've a couple of obsessions in History education; the English Revolution and getting more diversity into the curriculum. It's not always easy to reconcile the two - especially within the constraints of the A Level spec. But this is giving me some ideas. jollyregicide.wordpress.com/2024/10/12/afr…

Open evening for prospective Y7 students & their parents. Exhausting but always a buzz to meet them. In History, perhaps more than any other subject, we seem to attract all those 'why don't you teach?' questions.

Disappointing: Given links between slavery & royalty; Elizabeth 1st’s partnership with John Hawkins; Charles II’s creation of the Royal Africa Company & biggest slave trader of the lot James Duke of York. Apologising the start of correcting the narrative. bbc.com/news/articles/…

Rainy Sunday afternoon watching One Life; story of Nicholas Winton & the Czech kindertransport. Powerful story so relevant today when attitudes to refugees again in news. How unspectacularly doing the right thing produced spectacular results. youtu.be/6ethollg-PI?si… via YouTube

One aspect of History I particularly love is its ability to constantly surprise you. Britain’s first black voter was in 1749, 25 years earlier than thought, and ran a pub theguardian.com/world/2024/oct…

As a teacher of the English Revolution, there’s something about this picture that really tickles me 🤣

Completely anachronistic and romantic nonsense I know, but I can't help thinking that Rainsborough was to the English Revolution what Danton was to the French, Trotsky to the Russian and Che to the Cuban.

Another CPD trip with the HWS History crew - joined by a token Geographer. Silk Roads at the British Museum.

Anniversary at this time of the year of the 1647 Putney Debates. One of the most exciting - and signifcant - moments of the English Revolution, and arguably of British political history in general. The late Justin Champion explains why. youtu.be/cHPZWY9Oa9I?si… via YouTube

A book by a philosopher that historians - and everybody else - should read. Argues that identities of gender, ethnicity, religion, nationality & class are historically located and not immutable. Very valuable insights for our times.

Teaching my Y10s GCSE USA in the 20th Century I was stumped by a question: When was the last time there was such a significant US election? It's not really my area of specialism, but I could only think of 1860 when the country was literally on the brink of civil war.😥

The middle of UCAS season; anxiety for students & their teachers. Of course we do all we can & it does all come good in the end. But the system is so overdue for reform; personal statements reward cultural capital and predicted grades & conditional offers are a version of Ebay.🤬

Remembrance day: Time to rethink WW1 narratives. My ancestor, Albert; fought alongside Indian troops against Ottomans for control of oil fields in Mesopotamia (Iraq). A working class London boy, joined up at 17, dead before he was 19. Dulce et decorum est? nam.ac.uk/explore/mesopo…

Truly terrifying prospect for US teachers. The proposal for compulsory prayer in schools turns the clock back to 1962. The other proposals … to 1930s Germany. And plenty on the Right in this country would support his ideas.

Anniversary of the 1640 release of 'Freeborn John' Lilburne from the Fleet prison. The two illustrations from his pamphlets, separated by years of civil war look like the first us of some sort of insta-filter !

I'm really not comfortable assosciating with Elon Musk's platform anymore so I'm migrating to Bluesky. I'll be double posting for a while. Come over and follow me at bsky.app/profile/hwshis…

Frazzled after 6th Form Open Evening. Exciting to meet prospective students & parents - but the best part is listening to current students selling 'their' 6th Form. Makes me think we're doing something right. And that pastoral support is as important as academic achievement

The anti-woke brigade are agitated over this display in Newark's civil war trail. Embarrasingly for them the displays features real people present at the town's sieges. This is John Americanus, a Black Royalist soldier. It's not political correctness gone mad. It's just History.

Very happy to be involved with UCL/Oxford Uninersity's research project on Teaching Empire. Converations about teaching History that go beyond the daily grind of exam specs and schemes of work really are the very best type of CPD. ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2024/…