The Fading History

Few students are studying history these days. And those that do seem to have an aversion to history books. “Instead, there is a preference for more bite-sized, experiential media, like TV history programmes or websites. Apparently, TV provides a model for what students expect from their university courses, as something involving ‘colour, action, biography and narrative’. There are complaints that students see history as ‘basically a narrative, descriptive subject’, and ‘expect to be told stories rather than acquire the skills of the historian’. A number of reasons have been offered to explain these trends.”