Council should leave George Square alone and lower its charges instead

There is a sting in the tail. The very same Glasgow City Council is embarking on a £1bn "refit" of George Square ("Cafes and play areas ... images show how new George Square would look", The Herald October 16). The phrase "people make Glasgow" is everywhere. How about asking these people if they want lower council charges, free bin uplifts and leaving George Square alone?

Of course we all know the answer. As with all things SNP the council is not listening to the very people it is supposed to represent.

Dr Gerald Edwards, Glasgow.

Scots history was taught

AS a former History teacher (whose specialism was Scottish History), I feel that I must correct some of the misinformation expressed in Alison Rowat’s article on the paucity of Scottish history teaching in Scottish schools ("Sir, why was I taught nothing about Scotland’s history?", The Herald, October 25. and Letters, October 26). First it is worth noting some context: Social Subjects (for example, Geography, Modern Studies and History), did not widely emerge in the curriculum as discrete subjects with specialist teachers until the 1960s. Prior to this, any teaching in History was generally left to English teachers, who, without adequate training or resources, were often only able to deliver a debased provision.

With the advent of O Grade in 1963, Social Subjects emerge in their current place in the curriculum. Accompanying this development were new resources, notably Cameron’s History For Young Scots volumes 1 & 2 (published 1963), which became the set text for S1 & 2 in many Scottish schools (including my own).

Secondly, Scottish topics became compulsory in certificate courses. I taught Scottish topics in the Alternative O Grade course in the 1970s and from 1986, an embedded third of the Standard Grade course was Scottish. Higher followed suit and of the two examined papers, one is Scottish. Similarly, at Advanced Higher, three of the 10 options are Scottish (only one is British). Thus Scottish History has been a core component of teaching in Scottish schools for at least four decades - to the extent that 20 years ago 50% of my teaching in S1-6 was Scottish History - and my chief concern was that this might be too much and at the expense of other important areas of the past.

At the same time as Scottish History has been promoted in our schools, so too have been the core skills of the historian: one of these is evaluating. I would hope my own students if evaluating your correspondents’ evidence would conclude that they were biased, anecdotal and unsupported.

The notion that the Establishment has denied Scots access to their own history in order to control them is no more credible than Mel Gibson’s accent in Braveheart.

A Blue, Dundee.

• ANENT Alison Rowat's lamentation about the lack of knowledge of Scottish history, I am very grateful to the History Department at my alma mater, the High School of Stirling, for the excellent grounding it gave me in the history of Scotland. It was one of the few schools at the time that taught the Scottish History sections of both the O Grade and Higher Grade examinations.

It was interesting that when I went to the University of Glasgow to study Modern and Medieval History, the three years of "British" History was devoted entirely to England. The excuse given for this was that there was a separate Scottish History Department in the university.

Professor KB Scott, Stirling.

Read more: What other country would allow such appalling neglect of its history?

The myth of Culloden

THERE is a lot more to this issue than mere neglect. In 1965 my primary school head teacher, who had regularly taught us Scottish history, gave us an account of the Battle of Culloden, based on a little-known history of Inverness. It recorded that Cumberland’s army had been followed by another army of wives, girlfriends, hangers-on and scavengers.

As soon as the battle ended, they descended on the battlefield, stripping every body of every item of clothing. Meanwhile Cumberland rushed off to Beauly, to impress the Frasers, and then to Fort Augustus, to start rebuilding the fort.

A week later, the population of Inverness was smitten with the appalling stench of decaying corpses blowing down into the town. Cumberland was pressed into returning and dictated that some 50 of the bodies be buried in one spot and labelled English, while all the others were to be buried elsewhere together. This was because there was no way of identifying the dead.

My teacher’s closing remark was that this was not entirely true, as any body showing flogging weals on its back could be ruled out as being Scottish.

That is how a certain myth arose.

George F Campbell, Glasgow.

Uefa should crack down

IN light of the Green Brigade distributing Palestinian flags to supporters ("Result only regret as Celtic come of age against old Euro foes", Herald Sport, October 26), is it not time that UEFA took sterner action than a paltry fine?

Can I suggest closing the stadium for all European matches for at least two years and if that doesn’t work a sizeable ban from European competition? That would probably be the only way these “fans” would learn that their behaviour is disgraceful and unacceptable.

Michael Watson, Glasgow.

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The wisdom of Plato

NEIL Mackay writes today that the fundamental problem with politics is that the wrong people hold power ("Shame on FM for selling out poor for middle-class votes", The Herald October 26).

'Twas ever so. Greek philosopher Plato wrote that those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.

Bill Brown's letter (October 26) is apt in concluding that sometimes we don't know what our MSPs are talking about. My conclusion is that they don't know either.

David Miller, Milngavie.