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Why do local history courses continue to decline? |
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Why do local history courses continue to decline? |
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In 1997 we identified eighty-three colleges and universities offering local history further learning courses in the form of a certificate, diploma or a degree. In addition, there were a great many courses being provided by the WEA. This year, as at 20 June 2008, we have found only 19 colleges and universities who may be running similar courses this autumn. The WEA website lists 124 local history related course of which fewer than 10 appear to be about learning how to undertake your own local history research. We say 19 colleges and universities ‘may be’ running courses because some have yet to update their web-sites and the only details we can find are for 2007. So, why is there this continuing decline in local history courses? To find an answer to this question we need to look back over what has happened during the last twenty years or so. In December 1994 some thirty local history tutors and course administrators from around the country gathered together in London to discuss the ‘impact of accreditation on local history teaching and adult education’. I was there and wrote a three page report (LHM No.47, Jan/Feb 1995). On reflection, the early 1990s was a period when the number of local history courses on offer around England was at its peak, but by the time of the 1994 conference, accreditation was already leading to fewer courses in rural areas in South West England, according to one speaker, Michael Costen from Bristol University. His was not the only voice of caution on the day. As I reported at the time, university based lecturers were more enthusiastic about accreditation than non-university based tutors. The arguments in favour of accreditation seemed compelling at the time and I was moved to write that it could ‘only be a good thing (and) instead of being suspicious, we should embrace it’. We did also advocate ‘alternative ways of learning about local history’ and suggested that county associations should work with archives, libraries and museums to run courses and to apply for grants from local councils. My report prompted three local historians of note to respond (LHM No.48, Mar/Apr 1995). Alan Rogers wrote ‘My worries about certification in local history are not so much that it may lead to an emphasis on generalities and on techniques and sources rather than the particularities of local history. Rather I see certification in adult education as part of a wider process which is undermining many of the advances made in adult education over the last forty years or so.’ He then went on to cite five examples. Bruce Townsend concluded his article with a warning: ‘We must be careful — oh so very careful, that accreditation, or whatever the next buzz word might be, doesn’t scare away the next generation of local historians’. Then there were David Hayns’s words of caution: ‘Kate Tiller was right when she predicted that accreditation may lead to a more rigid curriculum and a loss of flexibility. It may also lead to a loss of many potential students.’ Hindsight is a wonderful thing and as I went through back issues of Local History Magazine looking for previous mentions of local history courses in news and articles (and there are quite a few) I found a news item from Issue 21 (Apr 1989) about a conference on ‘Qualifications in Local History’, where the number of English local history certificates, diplomas and degrees on offer were described by various participants as ‘a jungle’, ‘confused’, ‘a fraud’ and ‘opportunist’. The day was organised by the Association of Local History Tutors (ALHT) and the Conference of Teachers of Regional and Local History in Tertiary Education (CORAL). This was the first time I heard talk of ‘how a system of credits could be organised’. I concluded my report by saying that ‘The local history paper chase appears to be driven by two considerations — money and status. Universities and polytechnics are being forced to consider the revenue earning potential of their courses (and) if calling your jam a preserve means you can charge more then the temptation to do so must be considerable, especially when there are consumers who prefer to display a preserve to jam on their table.’ ALHT and CORAL were probably at their peak in the late-1980s and early-1990s, since when they have been in decline. CORAL seems to have disappeared into the British Association for Local History (BALH) without a trace after two inquorate AGMs in 2006 and 2007 and a similar fate is hanging over ALHT, as I have been told they are in talks with BALH about ‘merging’. In 1997 ALHT had c120 members, by 2004 is was c100 and in 2008 it is ‘just over 50 and falling’. The decline of these two groups mirrors what has happened to local history courses. The cost of university based local history courses with qualifications at the end of them are now prohibitive for many would be students, over £1000 and £850 at Oxford and Kingston respectively for example. Much more affordable is a ten week WEA course which will cost you £50–£60, whilst the innovative College-on-the-Net is offering a non-accredited 20 lesson on-line course for £175. In 2004 local history courses suffered another body blow when the Government’s Learning and Skills Council (LSC) announced that it was to concentrate expenditure on ‘raising literacy, numeracy and IT skills within the workforce, especially among 16–19 year olds’ (LHM No.99, Nov/Dec 2004) and the LSC admitted that local history courses would only continue if they were profitable for providers. The same news report quoted Dr David Marcombe, who has been running local history courses at Nottingham University for the last thirty years, as saying: ‘Course numbers have been falling since the introduction of accreditation and funding being tied to the completion of course work (and) so much recreational history on TV is militating against interactive history in the classroom’. In addition, hundreds of Heritage Lottery Fund (LHF) and Local Heritage Initiative (LHI) schemes across the country have taken would-be students away from the more traditional ways of learning about local history. I used my 2004 report to argue for ‘accredited local history tutors instead of accredited courses who offer their skills and services to individuals, ad-hoc groups and societies working to ALHT published and approved terms and conditions’. The funding of such courses to come from the participants, local history societies and grants from local councils for one-off projects. I know from conversations which I have had that others have been thinking about the challenge of how we can find and help people with the time and the energy to become skilled in local history research. Paul Anderton, an ALHT member and former Keele University tutor, together with some colleagues, founded the North Staffordshire Historians’ Guild in 2000 ‘to provide mutual support whilst discussing academic issues and related topics’. The Guild has adopted an ‘informal structure’, associate membership is by invitation and meetings are usually limited to about 25 participants (www.historyguild.org.uk). BALH has just submitted evidence to a Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) consultation paper, Informal Adult Learning — Shaping the Way Ahead. BALH has told DIUS that: I welcome the spirit of what they say, although I detect a hint of patronage in their attitude to self-help groups. I am not convinced that further and higher education authorities have made local history courses ‘universally available’, nor do I believe that self-help groups, with the right kind of tutor/mentor, cannot reach and serve ‘non-traditional learners’ as well as any college or university. The good thing is that BALH is addressing the problem. All we need now is for local history societies, or groups of individual local historians, to respond by becoming community leaders in the provision of local history courses in a way which makes them easily accessible. Some villages or towns may be able to sustain their own courses, whilst in large conurbations, people might come together from across a wider area and meet in city or town centres. The continuing decline in the number of local history courses has to be halted and that is not going to be done by BALH or articles such as this. The best we can do is to stimulate a grassroots discussion with a view to encouraging individuals and what tutors remain to establish their own learning and research groups. The future of local history is in their hands. Possible providers of 2008 university based local history course listed on the web: Other course providers: |
Robert Howard 25 June 2008 |
