Niall Ferguson misses the purpose (On history, Gove is correct, 15 February). I studied history at a state comprehensive until last year, once I was 17. My main criticism of the syllabus i used to be taught is that it left me clueless in regards to the global impact of British colonial rule, other than a couple of smug lines in a textbook about Victoria ruling the waves. Michael Gove’s proposed changes only glorify this aspect of Britain’s past. The German education system feels it’s its duty to drill into students the atrocities committed by their forefathers within the second world war. It’s embarrassing that teenagers emerge from British schools with out a awareness that the drastic wealth division between the west and the remainder of the arena is predicated on an uncomfortable legacy of slavery, bloodshed and shameless plundering. Yes, these abuses were conducted by our distant ancestors – but we must always remember after we walk the streets of Liverpool and Bristol that such cities were built at the spoils of a lucrative slave trade. If our awareness of those parts of our history was heightened, perhaps we would consider carefully about allowing an African asylum-seeking mother and her son to starve to death in Westminster, as happened in March 2010.
Rebecca Grant
Manchester

• While it’s mildly amusing to read history professors’ bitchy comments about their differences on Gove’s new curriculum, the failings surrounding what’s appropriate for the study room aren’t so simple as Niall Ferguson asserts. Find out how to engage learners is all about imagination, thinking skills, being a detective, enjoying blood and gore and yes, having fun. But we are facing real issues of limited time and pop culture it’s in favour of fashionable contemporaneity. Lists of assumed heroes and some heroines isn’t sufficient. The Gove model is more corresponding to a motley selection of nationalistic stories aligned to English studies. Perhaps we must always delay the study of proper history post-16 to encourage the event of potential professors.
Nicholas Tyldesley
Bolton

• Niall Ferguson asks if it’s acceptable for youngsters to go away school “knowing nothing concerning the Norman conquest, the English civil war or the fantastic revolution but plenty (well, a little) concerning the Third Reich, the recent Deal and the civil rights movement” In an increasingly diverse yet economically ailing society, it is vital for its democratic functioning for citizens to know the character of prejudice with the intention to combat discrimination, and to grasp something of Keynesian alternatives to the present government’s economic policies.
Michael Somerton
Hull