FEW school subjects are so divisive. When Michael Gove, Britain’s education secretary, released draft changes to the country’s national curriculum in February it was his plan for history that created headlines. Mr Gove’s proposal called for history to be studied “as a coherent, chronological narrative”, beginning with the early Britons and ending with the cold war. Opponents said the syllabus overstressed the deeds of “posh white blokes” and underplayed those of minorities. “Unteachable, unlearnable and un-British” blasted a campaign group on April 10th. Rival camps of historians have published petitions and rowed on television. That shoot-out will last beyond the official consultation period, which closes next week.

Politicians with an axe to grind have often twisted history books, lionising characters they admire and tainting ones they do not. In March Dmitry Livanov, Russia’s education minister, promised a new textbook to replace the 80 or so in use. That looks like an effort by Vladimir Putin’s government to commandeer Russian history and partially sanitise Stalin (though Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago” is also taught in schools). But the rumpus in Britain reflects a deeper and more subtle argument dividing school staff rooms around the world—one with broader consequences. As well as tussling over the content of courses, parents, teachers and politicians are now discussing the techniques by which history is taught, and debating what the discipline is for.

For 40 years history teachers in most of Europe have favoured concepts over chronology. Rather than tackling history as one long narrative sweep, schoolchildren dip in and out of periods in search of topics thought appropriate for their age. Close analysis of historical sources—such as cartoons, photographs and contemporary accounts—emphasises that history is slippery and subjective. In Britain this approach emerged from the Schools History Project (SHP), a review of teaching methods launched in 1972. Its boosters proclaimed that history “is not a body of knowledge” but “a heap of materials which survives from the past”. That thinking influenced the syllabuses now followed by most British schoolchildren.

The model has fans elsewhere. Schools in Germany’s 16 Länder (states) employ several exam boards and more than 400 different textbooks, but evaluation of historical sources makes up the “core of the teaching” across the country, says Sylvia Semmet, the president of the European Association of History Educators. The history syllabus of post-apartheid South Africa, also influenced by the SHP, makes “applicable” learning the priority. Schools in Australia take the same approach.

Some teachers in these countries are growing weary of this method. At its most extreme, source-based history and skill-based teaching can seem to devalue knowledge for its own sake. Peter Kallaway, a professor at the University of the Western Cape, points out that South African children learn about America only through the prism of capitalism (in the Grade 11 topic, “Capitalism and the USA 1900-1940”). European history feels disjointed—children may learn a little about the second world war but then wait two years to learn more. Grumblers in Britain fret that pupils’ historical knowledge is narrowing. Under one exam board, students can earn 40% of a history GCSE (a standard qualification for 14- to 16-year-olds) by learning about cattlemen and cowboys in the American West.

Interesting times

Critics look to countries such as France and Poland for the antidote. Students there must study history until the final year of school. Teachers lead their charges through chronological summaries of important events. Pupils still sift fact and fiction from contemporary sources, but not until they are older. They also learn to be good citizens. Children in France learn about their country’s revolution, and how the republic has fared. The curriculum helps consolidate national identity says James Cathcart, of the Lycée International de Saint Germain-en-Laye, a school near Paris.

These methods can sometimes be stodgy. Indian schoolchildren complain about learning dates by rote. Yet teaching full of fact-filled narratives can help bright sparks focus. Chloé Blanchet, a 14-year-old high school student in Quebec, enjoys learning about Canadian history, which her studies have covered in depth. Her teacher uses an activity book to test the class’s knowledge of key dates. Facts are tangible and near at hand. Across the Atlantic in northern England, Alice Grierson, in her penultimate year of school in Yorkshire, is glad that she is not being taught in a strictly chronological fashion. Nevertheless, the elements that she enjoys most about her course—economic history, British social reforms—are those that place her learning within a larger narrative context.

Perhaps politicians overestimate their ability to influence the classroom, whichever approach they favour. Henning Hues of the Georg Eckert Institute in Germany has studied the curriculum in South Africa, where teachers are hard to corral. “Textbooks do not have an impact there,” he says. In America a broad range of teaching styles and syllabuses have survived government efforts to unify them. In Germany some teachers have avoided teaching the history of the German Democratic Republic, says Ulrich Bongertmann, president of the country’s History Teachers’ Association. That problem remains, but it is now fading as younger teachers enter the profession and those years grow more distant.

Better teacher training, an extension to the compulsory age at which history is taught and more time for history lessons would help young Britons’ education as much as innovation in the curriculum. Richard Evans, a historian who opposes Mr Gove’s plans, says that “history is an unmanageably large subject in many ways”. A better sense of chronology can help young minds make sense of a sprawling discipline. An enthusiastic teacher matters more.