HISTORY fires students' imaginations, according to the National Curriculum, but in our fun-seeking society of PlayStation 2, home cinemas and the world at our fingertips, can history compete?
Certainly Tim Collins, Conservative shadow education secretary thinks so.
His comments were a battle cry which many history teachers across the country were, I'm sure, applauding.
At the moment, students are able to drop history at 14, a policy adopted by a past Conservative government, but now lamented by Collins.
History is no longer one of the staple subjects for our children and has been cut down to just an hour a week in most schools. For trainee history teachers this is a major problem.
The prospect of being able to teach more hours and be able to have time to do all the things that makes history interesting rather than rushing through 1066-1990 in an hour a week over three years is appealing.
By limiting the time spent on teaching history many teachers are forced to rely on the dusty textbook and teach uninspiring lessons to rush through the curriculum.
The interest in history is also shown by the number of television programmes on the subject. Learning about British history is as vital as any of the core subjects of Maths, English and IT.
In fact history is a subject which allows all three to be taught in context, as well as teaching valuable evaluative and analytical skills which are used across the workplace.
No other country, except Iceland, has reduced its history teaching to stop at 14. The debate on increasing history should not be an emphasis on the evil of nationalism but on a national requirement.
