• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

Terry Haydn

  • Home
  • About
  • Learning to Teach History
    • PGCE Student Teacher
    • ICT in History Teaching
    • Time and Chronology
    • Assessment
    • History and Citizenship
    • Evidence
    • Causation
    • Substantive concepts
    • Empathy
    • Drama and Role-Play
    • Significance
    • Values and dispositions in school history
    • Class management
    • Interpretations
    • History and newspapers
    • Purpose of School History
    • Inclusion and diversity
      • Parent’s story
      • Claire’s full story
    • CPD
  • Managing Pupil Behaviour
    • The Haydn Scale and ‘The Right to Learn’
    • Levels of Control
    • Links to the research
    • How to get the class quiet; what do teachers say?
    • ‘Coping’; how do teachers handle things when they are not in complete control?
    • It isn’t quick or easy…
    • Sending pupils out; what do teachers say?
    • Moving pupils; what do teachers say?
    • Classroom rules; what do teachers say?
    • Why do some teachers become better than others at managing pupil behaviour? What do teachers say?
    • Complex and sophisticated skills
    • Mistakes: what do mentors say?
    • Zero tolerance: what (some) heads and deputies say…
    • Some of the Variables that influence Classroom Climate
    • Refusal
    • What use is the Scale?
    • Links to Other Useful Resources
  • NEET in Norfolk
  • Pupil Disaffection
  • Blog
  • Contact
You are here: Home / PGCE History at UEA / Time and Chronology / Should pupils learn the dates of important events in British History? / Margaret Thatcher, politician

Margaret Thatcher, politician

From Thatcher, M. (1993) The Downing Street Years, London, Harper Collins: 595-6.

“Though not an historian myself, I had a very clear- and I had naively imagined uncontroversial- idea of what history was. History is an account of what happened in the past. Learning History, therefore, requires knowledge of events. It is impossible to make sense of such events without absorbing sufficient factual information and without being able to place matters in a clear chronological framework- which means knowing dates. No amount of imaginative sympathy for historical figures or situations can be a substitute for the initially tedious but ultimately rewarding business of memorising what actually happened…..

The “New History”…. with its emphasis on concepts rather than chronology and empathy rather than facts was at the root of so much of what was going wrong……

In July 1989 the History Working Group produced its interim report. I was appalled. It put emphasis on interpretation and enquiry as against content and knowledge. There was insufficient weight given to British History. There was not enough emphasis on history as chronological study……

I considered the document comprehensively flawed and told Ken that there must be major, not just minor changes. In particular I wanted to see a clearly set out chronological framework for the whole history curriculum.”

Copyright © 2025 | Terry Haydn | All Rights Reserved