The recent BBC documentary series Union (still available on iPlayer) by historian David Olusoga was well received by many: notably The Herald’s Alison Rowat, who this week wrote a thought-provoking column noting that it had made her realise how little she had been taught about Scottish history.

Read her article here 👈

Her piece produced a slew of responses from our readers yesterday, several of whom reported a similar experience.

Read those letters here 👈

Today, however, a former teacher argues that Scottish History was in no way neglected in our schools.

Avis Blue of Dundee writes:

"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. 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."