In 1994 the history tutors at St Hugh's College, Oxford, decided to reallocate a prize formerly awarded to a second-year undergraduate historian. We thought that offering a prize of several hundred pounds for an essay written by a sixth-former would encourage a large number of entries. We also thought that it would give us a very good idea of what was going on in sixth-form history in a wide range of schools. By persuading History Review to publish the winning essay, considerable kudos was added to monetary reward: very few historians secure an audience of this size before they have even taken their A levels, IB or equivalent. And the wide readership of the Review would gain an idea of what the best sixth-form historians are capable.
On all counts we were right. We have had an average of over 100 entries a year, for 17 years. That is an awful lot of history essays, all of them 3000-4000 words long. The candidates are to a considerable degree self-selecting, so we gain an insight into what the best historians are doing in schools.
The winning essays have varied enormously in style and subject. One attempted a survey of the whole of medieval European history, with the grace and elegance of a potential Richard Southern (though without reiterating anything Southern had written). Another teased out the implications of a mid twelfth century charter found in the Leicestershire Records Office which no one had ever previously noticed in print. This was true research, of a sort one might expect, but rarely get, from a postgraduate student. We have awarded the prize to essays on Edmund Spenser's views on English colonialism in Ireland, and on the implications for the British Empire of the bodyline controversy. Other winners have written on more conventional sixth-form staples: the Exclusion Crisis, Bismarck, New Liberalism, Mussolini and so on. You can look them up in past issues of History Review, and very rewarding (and instructive) reading they make. But great as the variety has been, certain trends have been detectable.
The best essays remain outstanding. This is a tribute to the inspiration provided by so many history teachers, as well as to the enthusiasm, ingenuity and intelligence of their pupils. It has been striking that the winners and the others who do particularly well almost always attribute their success to an inspirational teacher, who has pointed them in the direction of thought-provoking reading.
Other less encouraging characteristics have, however, become more and more noticeable in recent years. The most deleterious is the creation of an essay as a tessellation of quotations--'quotes'--from historians. The candidates do not quote in order to disagree, to argue, to question. They simply string together brief excerpts from history books, as if they did not have the confidence to express their own views in their own words. Most of these quotations express, verbosely and inelegantly, what Basil Fawlty once described as the bleeding obvious. The candidates balance opposing views, usually only two. They espouse neither, preferring to go for a fudged compromise somewhere in the middle. Balancing conjunctions--most commonly 'however'--appear all over the page. It is very difficult, often impossible, to detect any line of argument. In the current jargon, they tick the boxes; but they are in truth not much more than cut-and-paste exercises, some from textbooks, some from the internet.
The existence of the Prize has enabled us to build up contacts with many history teachers, so it has become easy for us to investigate the reasons for this regrettable tendency. The reason, it transpires, is the A level extended essay or coursework, which has rapidly come to share many of the characteristics of the rest of the current public examination system. The marking schemes, we are told, require just such balancing of views by historians. They reward quotation from historians, regardless of whether what is quoted is simply platitude. This unthinking deference may help to explain how it could recently be alleged in the press that IB model history answers were plagiarised--sorry, downloaded--from Wikipedia. It encourages conformity and discourages originality, argumentativeness, ingenuity, passion: all the qualities which make for great historical writing. Time and again the essays which we judge to be amongst the best of the year's bunch turn out to secure mediocre marks from A level or other examiners. This is profoundly depressing, especially in an age when so much has been made to depend on examination grades, as if they could be trusted as an infallible and accurate reflection of ability.
These remarks are offered at a time when the examination of sixth-form history seems to be under reconsideration. I want to enter a heartfelt plea for a return to a system where originality, argumentativeness, conviction, intelligence, and perhaps even an occasional sally at perversity, are rewarded, not penalised. In future, able sixth-formers should be encouraged to quote historians only when, in their view, those authorities are wrong. Good history at any level is not engendered by deferential conformity, but by heretical scepticism.
George Garnett is a Fellow and Tutor at St Hugh's College, Oxford.
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