The national archives - How we use and teach our history

Experience has always been, and remains, one of the very best teachers.

However, if you describe learning from experience in another way — formally studying history and understanding why we are as we are through it — very many of us, far too many students, and those who should inspire them, turn away as if the lives of our ancestors had no relevance to our own.

This is especially peculiar in a society engorged on its past and so primed to recall the ignominies inflicted on the noble Gaels so valiant in the long ago.