History teacher Michael Davies (above) has been awarded a grant from the Winston Churchill Trust’s new Activate Fund to help aid the teaching of controversial histories in UK schools. He is one of only 7 people nationwide to receive this award.
Over the past two decades, schools have stopped teaching controversial historical topics. For example, by 2016 only 2,000 GCSE students – out of 250,000 – had studied the history of the Middle East. Government research has shown that this is caused by teachers being either worried or unequipped to address the topic.
Furthermore, at the end of 2019, two educational publishers, Hodder and Pearson, both withdrew textbooks about Israel and Palestine and 9/11 after accusation of bias, making it even harder for teachers and students to tackle these emotive subjects in the classroom.
Michael aims to use the grant from the Activate Fund to expand his Parallel Histories debating programme, initially across nine London schools and then beyond.
Parallel Histories brings together students from different religious and social backgrounds to debate controversial history robustly but respectfully. The programme will conclude in the summer of 2021 with a conference to showcase the students’ skills in front of politicians, educators and policymakers.
It has been successfully adapted to Covid-19 and three inter-school debates have already been run online.
From this, Michael aims to introduce a Parallel Histories module into teacher training to help equip them, whilst expanding other histories to be debated as part of the curriculum.
Ultimately Michael intends this work to encourage a change in national education policy, so that controversial history – and especially the history of current conflicts – will be taught in schools .
He would like to see accredited exam bodies such as A QA and OCR offering a Middle East option at GCSE , and an expansion to at least 10% of students taking a Middle East module at GCSE level.
Michael was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2015 to visit schools in Israel, Jordan and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, to find a better way of teaching the contentious history of Israel and Palestine.
With the encouragement of Prof Eyal Naveh, the editor of a book telling Israeli and Palestinian history as two separate narratives, he returned to the UK and created Parallel Histories , a new type of history resource that tells competing narratives using film clips, photos, maps and documents and challenges students to make up their own minds.
In 2017 Parallel Histories became a UK charity and in 2018 Michael stopped teaching to work on this full time.
Michael, who now lives in Edinburgh, said: “This fantastic Activate grant from the Winston Churchill Trust is to allow development of our schools debating programme across the UK.
“The initial work was in the North West and this grant will expand that work to London. We have also been working on a Scottish product and have created the Parallel Histories of the Union told from Unionist and Nationalist perspectives.
https://www.parallelhistories.org.uk/teachingscotland
“In August when schools return we will be setting up a Scottish debating forum to discuss controversial topics around the history of the Union with the help of Gemma Lindsay at The High School of Glasgow and Monica McGhee at Biggar High School. We’d be delighted to hear from schools interested in taking part.”
Michael is one of seven recipients of a grant from the Activate Fund, a new programme from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust which supports Churchill Fellows’ projects during the key period when they first return from their overseas research and start to make change happen in the UK.
This year the Fund is providing £101,000 in grants to seven Fellows, as part of a dedicated support package encompassing funds and non-financial assistance. The Activate Fund is a three-year pilot project, making its first grants in 2020.