History
About the Department
Mr. Nicholas Kitchen has been the Head of Department since 1991. He is also Head of Sixth Form. Additional teachers are Miss Kathryn Ingleby, Mr. Peter Richardson who is the Housemaster of Talbot and also teaches English and Mrs. Jane Collard, the Headmaster’s wife. There are two adjoining History classrooms, one of which contains an extensive History Library.
History is about people. It focuses on that which is human, with its entire idiosyncrasy, thus balancing what can be an over-emphasis on the material, technological, scientific and systematic. Fundamental to this is an encouragement of tolerance: we must never forget that people not like us are people like us.
As a department we aim to:
- Be relevant: encouraging an awareness that we exist in a continuum, a vital counter-weight to the current fashion for the transient. Through a greater understanding of where we came from, a better grasp of the contemporary world develops, including genocide in Darfur, the impact of economic recession, the nature of political change and styles of management.
- Prepare pupils for Higher Education: universities are currently bemoaning a decline in the ability of pupils to listen, write, and work independently rather than going through the hoops and display curiosity. History at Worksop College counters this.
- Preparing pupils for the flexi workforce of the 21st century: employers increasingly want adept people with general awareness rather than being highly trained in a particular area. History imparts readily transferable skills, opening rather than closing future doors e.g. an understanding of what makes people tick, the skills to investigate the evidence, formulate informed opinions, including the ability to see through things, deal with contradictions and ask awkward questions, mastery of detail yet cutting through to the core of an issue, handling abstract ideas in a logical manner, concise expression, putting together a clear explanation in an organised way. In short, employers want people who are independent thinkers, open-minded, disciplined and good at problem solving. History at Worksop College feeds this.
The subject, by definition, is diverse, covering society in its broadest sense, including politics, economics, culture, gender, race, religion and philosophy. The opportunity to ‘smell the books’ and ‘burn biros’!
We are a well co-ordinated and close Department which believes in itself and fosters academic excellence and a genuine interest well beyond the classroom. We have high expectations rooted in rigour, again highly saleable to universities. We encourage independence from the teacher: self-discipline! In the words of Galileo, ‘you cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to discover it within himself’.
Whilst incorporating new approaches, such as PowerPoint and the immense resource of the internet, including the History Department’s own website ‘wikispaces’, traditional and crucial skills are very much stressed, with distinct success, such as direct exposure to human beings, from survivors to academics, discussion and debate, verbal presentations, the value of books, including working in Sheffield University Library, the use of capital letters for proper nouns and the importance of handwriting.
In short, the vibrant History Department has produced a string of excellent results over an extended period of time…both in the short-term of that slip of paper in August and, just as importantly, in the long-term of the life skills acquired…
…and we never rest on our laurels in our unmitigated quest to rise above David Starkey’s ‘elaborately polished mediocrity’.
Each year a number of students go on to read History and related subjects such as Politics, Ancient History and Archaelogy at Universities such as Warwick, Nottingham, Durham, Exeter, Newcastle and Sheffield to name just a few.
