English
Grammar has a reputation for tedium, and a well-deserved one, perhaps, given the way in which was traditionally taught and the facility with which concern with grammar can become pedantry.[1] Grammar can, however, be a valuable tool for appraising historical thinking and for reflecting on how school history is made and understood.
Agency
Consider ‘agency’, or, in grammatical terms, the question ‘Who does what to whom?’[2] Grammatical analysis can reveal a great deal about our relationships with the past. ‘Critical historical consciousness’, for example – the historical equivalent of Nietzsche’s ‘philosophy with a hammer’ – subjects the past to the stringent scrutiny of the present, judging it iconoclastically (as with #RhodesMustFall).
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