Why I am finally discovering what history is for
I cheated in history at school.
It is not something I am particularly proud of, but in retrospect I am not sure whether it says more about me or about the way history was taught.
Tag: #education
Why Did Nobody Teach Me This at School?
I recently bought a Spanish football shirt to wear at a bar while watching Spain’s 3:0 win against Austria on Thursday.
That simple purchase unexpectedly led me down one of the most fascinating rabbit holes I have explored in a while.
It began with two Latin words embroidered on Spain’s coat of arms: Plus Ultra.
I knew from my school-Latin what the words meant, further beyond, but I still needed some context to understand the meaning.
A little research revealed that they are a reference to the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar. For the ancient world, these marked the edge of the known earth. The old warning was “Non Plus Ultra” — nothing lies beyond.
Then came the voyages of exploration.
The warning became an invitation.
There was indeed more beyond.
That discovery prompted another question.
Christopher Columbus sailed for Spain. Yet I vaguely remembered reading somewhere that he was Italian. Was that right?
It was. I kept digging.
Born in Genoa, Columbus spent years trying to persuade different European rulers to finance his ambitious plan to reach Asia by sailing west. It was only when the Spanish Crown agreed to back him that history changed forever.
Then I discovered something even more surprising.
Ferdinand Magellan, whose expedition first circumnavigated the globe, wasn’t Spanish either. He was Portuguese. And he himself was killed in the Philippines before the expedition was completed.
Like Columbus, he simply happened to be sailing under the Spanish flag.
As I kept digging, I also learnt for the first time why America is called America and why the Pacific is called the Pacific. I learnt why Brazil speaks Portuguese while much of South America speaks Spanish, why Spain became one of history’s great global powers, how its sudden enormous wealth became a resource curse, and, most strikingly of all, how all these historical facts are mirrored in the events happening in the world today.
By now, all this led to another kind of question:
Why was I only learning this as I approach retirement?
None of these are obscure historical curiosities.
They explain the world we live in.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised that perhaps history has often been taught backwards.
Schools understandably devote considerable attention to national history. In Britain, we studied the Tudors, the Industrial Revolution and the Second World War. In Germany, where I spent many years teaching, National Socialism understandably occupies a central place throughout secondary education.
These are all profoundly important topics.
But too often history becomes an exercise in remembering names, dates, battles and treaties.
The examination rewards recall.
Real understanding often comes later.
History is not simply the story of what happened.
History can be the highly relevant explanation of why today’s world looks the way it does.
Why does almost an entire continent speak Spanish?
Why is Brazil different?
Why was Córdoba (Spain) once much bigger and more important than London?
Why are Europe and Latin America still so culturally intertwined?
Why and how did globalisation begin centuries before the Internet?
Those are historical questions too.
They just happen to illuminate the present rather than merely describe the past.
While I was training teachers at the University of Sussex, one of the finest history lessons I have ever witnessed contained almost no conventional history.
The young trainee teacher warned parents in advance that the lesson would be unusual.
She darkened the classroom. She played the sound of air-raid sirens followed by distant explosions. Beforehand, she asked the children to climb underneath their desks and lie silently on the floor with their eyes closed.
For several minutes they simply listened.
Afterwards she asked them to write, not about dates, military strategy or political leaders, but about how they had felt.
For a brief moment, those children had experienced uncertainty, vulnerability and fear. Not the reality of war, of course, but enough to begin imagining what it might feel like to be a child living through one.
I have forgotten countless historical dates since leaving school. I have never forgotten that lesson.
Nor, I suspect, have the children who experienced it.
That teacher wasn’t merely teaching history.
She was teaching empathy and vividly demonstrating how history is so relevant to life in the 21st Century.
As I have grown older, I find myself increasingly drawn to education that asks questions rather than rewards memorisation.
The same thought has appeared repeatedly in my recent writing about economics.
Financial literacy is not really about memorising definitions.
It is about understanding why economies behave as they do.
Likewise, history should not simply teach us to remember what happened.
It should help us understand why our world became what it is.
Perhaps that is why I have found these discoveries in Spain so unexpectedly exciting.
I wasn’t simply learning historical facts.
I was discovering connections.
The voyages of Columbus and Magellan were not isolated adventures.
They marked the beginning of the first great wave of globalisation.
Trade routes expanded.
Ideas travelled.
Plants, animals, diseases and cultures crossed oceans.
The Mediterranean outside my window here was once dry land – another fact I was unaware of. It is only thanks to the Zanclean Flood that water entered from the Atlantic through the Strait of Gibraltar and opened up the possibility of a future global trade highway.
The world became permanently interconnected.
Five centuries later we are still living with the consequences.
History also reminds us that no civilisation remains permanently at the top.
Sometimes I wonder whether schools unintentionally leave us with the impression that education ends when we pass our examinations.
In reality, the opposite is true.
The most rewarding learning often begins afterwards.
It begins when curiosity replaces obligation.
When we are no longer asking, “Will this be in the exam?”
Instead we ask, “Why did nobody ever explain this?”
Perhaps that is the real purpose of education.
Not to fill our minds with information.
But to awaken a curiosity that lasts for the rest of our lives.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
— Marcel Proust
The Seven Economic Myths We Tell Ourselves
Last week I questioned whether our current school curriculum provides us with the knowledge we require for handling money during our adult life. This week I’d like to look at seven common economic myths I consequently grew up with that, I believe, should be examined by students in today’s education system.
Economics is often presented as a science of numbers. We hear about growth rates, inflation figures, government debt and stock market performance. Experts produce graphs. Politicians quote statistics. Journalists report percentages.
Yet much of our thinking about economics is not based on facts. We inherit economic beliefs in much the same way that we inherit religious beliefs, political loyalties, or assumptions about human nature. They become part of our mental furniture. We rarely examine them. We simply assume they are true.
Here are seven economic stories many of us have been taught to believe.
Myth No. 1. If GDP Is Growing, Everything Must Be Fine
One of the most common assumptions is that economic growth automatically means social progress. If the Gross Domestic Product is increasing, politicians congratulate themselves, commentators celebrate and newspapers announce that the economy is doing well.
But there is an obvious question that often goes unasked: doing well for whom?
GDP measures economic activity. It measures production. It tells us how much a country produces and sells. What it does not tell us is how that wealth is distributed or whether ordinary people are benefiting from it.
A nation can have impressive growth while housing becomes unaffordable, public services deteriorate and large sections of the population struggle to make ends meet.
As a former teacher, I sometimes compare GDP with examination results. A school may improve its statistics while becoming a worse place to learn. The numbers can look impressive while something essential is being lost.
The same is true of nations. Economic growth matters, but it is not the same thing as human flourishing.
Myth No. 2. Debt Is Always Bad
Most of us are taught to fear debt. For individuals, that is often sensible. Excessive borrowing can destroy lives. It can create stress, dependency and hardship. Yet not all debt is the same.
A mortgage, a student loan or a business investment is different from borrowing money to fund reckless consumption. One creates future value; the other merely brings tomorrow’s spending into today.
The same principle applies to governments. When a state borrows to invest in education, infrastructure, scientific research or healthcare, it may be creating assets that benefit future generations. The question is not whether debt exists, but whether the borrowing is productive and sustainable.
The most successful economies in the world often carry substantial public debt. What matters is not the existence of debt itself, but the wisdom with which it is used.
Myth No. 3. The Rich Create Jobs
This idea appears so frequently in political debate that many people accept it without question. There is, of course, some truth in it. Entrepreneurs create businesses. Businesses employ people. Investment can stimulate growth. But the story is incomplete.
Businesses do not hire employees simply because their owners are wealthy. They hire employees because there is demand for their products and services. A restaurant expands because customers fill its tables. A manufacturer recruits workers because orders are increasing. A shop hires staff because people are buying what it sells.
In other words, jobs are not created by wealth alone. They are created by economic activity. Moreover, much employment comes not from billionaires or multinational corporations, but from small and medium-sized businesses. Across Europe, countless family businesses, local shops, tradespeople and self-employed entrepreneurs collectively employ millions of people.
The real engine of employment is not wealth itself but a healthy and active economy.
Myth No. 4. Markets Always Know Best
For some people, the market has become almost a secular religion. The argument is familiar. Left alone, markets allocate resources efficiently. Government intervention merely creates distortions and stunts economic growth.
There is certainly some truth in this. Competitive markets can be remarkably effective. They often encourage innovation, efficiency and consumer choice. But markets are not infallible.
Consider healthcare. If access to medical treatment depends entirely upon ability to pay, many vulnerable people will be excluded.
Consider environmental protection. Businesses may profit by passing environmental costs onto society as a whole. Pollution becomes someone else’s problem.
Economists even have a term for these situations: market failures.
The reality is that markets and governments each have strengths and weaknesses. Mature societies require both. The challenge is not choosing one over the other, but finding the right balance between them.
Whenever someone insists that the answer is always more market or always more state, I become suspicious. Human societies are rarely that simple.
Myth No. 5. If You Tax the Rich, They Will Leave
This argument appears whenever tax reform is proposed. Raise taxes on wealthy individuals, we are told, and they will immediately pack their bags and move elsewhere.
At first glance, the claim seems plausible. Yet people are not spreadsheets.
Human beings make decisions based on family, friendships, culture, language, quality of life, security and belonging. Financial considerations matter, but they are rarely the only consideration.
Countries such as Norway, Sweden and Denmark have maintained relatively high levels of taxation while remaining prosperous, innovative and attractive places to live.
This does not mean taxes can be increased without limit. Excessive taxation can certainly discourage investment and entrepreneurship.
The point is simply that reality is more nuanced than political slogans suggest.
People stay for many reasons. They leave for many reasons. Tax is only one factor among many.
Myth No. 6. Inflation Is Always Bad
The word inflation usually arrives wrapped in anxiety. We hear that prices are rising and immediately assume disaster.
Certainly, high inflation can be deeply damaging. It erodes savings, creates uncertainty and hits those on lower incomes particularly hard. Yet economists generally do not aim for zero inflation.
A modest level of inflation is usually considered healthy because it reflects a growing economy. It encourages spending, investment and economic activity.
What is often forgotten is that the opposite problem can be equally dangerous.
If prices continually fall, people postpone purchases. Why buy today if everything will be cheaper tomorrow? Businesses then sell less, investment slows and unemployment may rise.
Like many things in life, the issue is not inflation versus no inflation. It is balance. Too much inflation can be destructive. Too little can be equally problematic.
Myth No. 7. Money Is Real
This final myth is my favourite because it takes us beyond economics and into philosophy.
Most of us think of money as something solid and tangible. We earn it, spend it, save it and worry about it. Yet money possesses no intrinsic value.
A fifty-euro note is merely paper. The number displayed in your bank account is simply a digital record stored on a computer somewhere.
Money works because we collectively believe it works. Its value depends upon trust.
This is not as strange as it sounds. Much of human civilisation rests upon shared beliefs. Nations exist because enough people believe they exist. Laws function because people collectively accept their legitimacy. Companies, universities and governments all depend upon systems of shared trust.
Money is one of humanity’s most successful collective stories. That does not make it imaginary. It makes it a social construct, like any other.
And perhaps that is one of the most important lessons economics can teach us.
If only I’d known in my twenties what I know now
If there is a lesson I wish somebody had taught me when I was starting out, it is that wealth is rarely built through cleverness alone. Looking back, the people who seem to achieve financial security are often not the most intelligent, the most educated or even the highest earners.
They are the people who consistently do a few simple things well.
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- They spend less than they earn
- They avoid unnecessary debt
- They acquire productive assets
- They diversify their investment portfolio
- They think long term
- And above all, they allow time and compounding to work their quiet magic.
Perhaps that is the greatest economic lesson of all. Not that there are easy answers. But that small, sensible decisions repeated over decades are often more powerful than brilliant ideas pursued for a few months.
Beyond Economics
The purpose of examining these myths is not to replace one certainty with another.
It is to become more cautious whenever someone offers a simple explanation for a complicated problem.
Economic debates are often presented as battles between truth and error, between common sense and foolishness, between left and right. Reality is usually less satisfying.
The older I become, the less interested I am in certainty and the more interested I am in questions.
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- Who benefits from economic growth?
- What kind of debt creates value?
- When do markets work well, and when do they fail?
- How much inequality can a society tolerate before trust begins to erode?
And perhaps most intriguingly of all: what other things do we collectively believe in that are no less dependent on faith than money itself?
Economics turns out to be about far more than money.
It is about human beings and the stories we tell ourselves about how society works.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
Social Media Bans for Under 16s
Why banning social media for under-16s may feel right — but fails to address the real issue
There is a growing political appetite to ban social media for under-16s. Governments in countries such as Australia and Indonesia have already moved in this direction, driven by rising concern about anxiety, depression, and the psychological effects of digital life.
The instinct is understandable. But it may also be wrong.
The comfort of the ban
A ban is politically attractive because it is clear, decisive and easy to communicate. It signals protection. It tells a worried public that something is being done.
But it also avoids a harder question.
Why has social media become so central to childhood in the first place?
Policy without evidence
The Cambridge psychologist Sander van der Linden has been unusually blunt. There is, he argues, “zero empirical evidence” that banning social media for teenagers improves outcomes.
His warning is not ideological but methodological:
“Blindly instituting wholesale bans for teens takes the ‘evidence’ out of evidence-based policy.”
This matters. Because once policy is driven primarily by anxiety, it becomes vulnerable to simplification.
And simplification is exactly what this issue does not need.
The variability problem
Social media does not affect all children in the same way.
For some, it amplifies vulnerability: comparison, exclusion, anxiety.
For others, it provides connection, identity and support. As well as of course access to information for school work.
The outcome depends on:
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- personality
- patterns of use
- existing mental health
- social environment
A blanket ban assumes uniform harm where there is, in reality, radical variation.
The misdiagnosis
More fundamentally, a ban risks targeting the wrong thing.
The problem is not simply that children use social media. It is that social media have been designed to capture attention:
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- infinite scroll
- algorithmic reinforcement
- intermittent rewards
These are not neutral features. They are behavioural systems.
Yet instead of regulating the environment, we regulate the child.
We restrict the user because we do not confront the system.
The illusion of control
Even on practical grounds, bans are fragile.
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- Teenagers will bypass them
- Peer groups will remain online
- The demand for connection will persist
- Evidence shows that the dangers are greater once hidden underground
The behaviour does not disappear. It relocates. More importantly, a ban does not teach navigation. It postpones exposure.
From protection to preparation
Van der Linden’s alternative is not permissiveness, but preparation:
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- early digital literacy
- gradual exposure
- critical thinking
- resilience
In short:
Not protection through restriction, but protection through competence.
The question beneath the question
But even this may not be the deepest layer because the focus on social media obscures a more uncomfortable possibility.
Over recent decades, childhood has changed:
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- less independent movement
- less unsupervised play
- more adult control
- more structured time
Children are safer, and yet less free.
We did not simply give children smartphones.
We removed much of the world they would otherwise have enjoyed.
Social media did not replace childhood.
In some respects, it stepped into a space that had already been narrowed.
Conclusion
The case for concern about social media is strong.
The case for banning it is not.
As Sander van der Linden argues, policy should be guided by evidence, not urgency or political posturing. At present, the evidence for bans is thin, while the complexity of the problem is substantial.
If we want children to spend less time online, we will have to do something more difficult than passing laws.
We will have to ask what kind of childhood we are willing to allow.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” – C.S. Lewis