Michael Gove’s war on professional historical expertise : conservative curriculum reform, extreme Whig history and the place of imperial heroes in modern multicultural Britain

Six years of continuously baiting his opponents within the history profession eventually amounted to little where it mattered most. UK Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, finally backtracked in 2013 on his plans to impose a curriculum for English schools based on a linear chronology of the achievements of British national heroes. His ‘history as celebration’ curriculum was designed to instil pride amongst students in a supposedly shared national past, but would merely have accentuated how many students in modern multicultural Britain fail to recognise themselves in what is taught in school history lessons. Now that the dust has settled on Gove’s tenure as Secretary of State, the time is right for retrospective analysis of how his plans for the history curriculum made it quite so far. How did he construct an ‘ideological’ conception of expertise which allowed him to go toe-to-toe for so long with the ‘professional’ expertise of academic historians and history teachers? What does the content of this ideological expertise tell us about the politics of race within Conservative Party curriculum reforms? This article answers these questions to characterise Gove as a ‘whig historian’ of a wilfully extreme nature in his attachment to imperial heroes as the best way to teach national history in modern multicultural Britain

Neuropsychological performance and dementia in depressed patients after 25 year follow-up: a controlled study

Background. Previous research has yielded conflicting evidence regarding the long-term cognitive outcome of depression. Some studies have found evidence for a higher incidence of subsequent cognitive impairment or dementia, while others have refuted this. Method. Depression, neuropsychological performance, functional ability and clinical variables were assessed in a sample of patients who had been hospitalized for depression 25 years previously. Results. Data were available on 71 depressed patients (10 of whom were deceased) and 50 surgical controls. No significant differences were found between depressed subjects and controls on any neuropsychological measure. Ten depressed patients but no controls were found to have dementia at follow-up (continuity corrected χ2=5.93, P <0.01). Presence of dementia was predicted by older age at baseline. Vascular dementia was the most common type. Conclusions. We conclude that this study did not find evidence that early onset depression is a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, but that for a small subgroup there appears to be a link with vascular dementia. Several plausible explanations for this link, such as lifestyle factors, require further investigation

Manufacturing Enterprise Systems

this paper consists of Object Management Group (OMG) members, representing the majority of object technology suppliers. The purpose of targeting this group is to obtain information about feasible application architectures and system designs that meet the manufacturing requirements as outlined in this white paper. Technical and managerial staff within the industry who are interested in learning more about Manufacturing Special Interest Group activities have also been targeted. What Is an OMG Special Interest Group