I think a key issue in history teaching at large is how we can finally break away from organising curricula around political (or worse, constitutional) history.

There is no reason why we should prioritise political history in our curriculum, yet it‘s such a stubborn default. (1)

I think an important (and interesting) thought experiment for anyone involved in history curriculum planning is to consider what a curriculum might look like without *any* political history.

What would be included? What overarching story would the curriculum tell? (2)

What do we consider historically important and educationally valuable when we look beyond battles and princes?

Often history curricula seem to emerge the other way around: the political narrative comes first, and everything else is sort of bolted on. (3)

Of course political history has its place, but I do think that a core curriculum narrative that travels from 1066 to 1215, 1688, 1945 and so on (with some bits on medieval society in between) is just not very rigorous history. (4)

In particular, I think that knowledge-rich history (which is something close to my heart) sometimes seems to collapse into these defaults, which is a shame. (5)

A knowledge-rich history curriculum that consciously moves beyond battles-and-princes history and places social and cultural history at the heart of the curriculum would be truly exciting and marvellous to behold. (6)

Of course I am not saying that there aren’t any departments that have already moved beyond core political narratives, but it seems to me that as a wider profession this is a dragon that we still need to slay (and which stubbornly seems to resist slaying). (7)