My thoughts of the scrapping of History of Art A-level

Last week the UK lost it’s History of Art A-level

There’s surely no argument that millennia of human endeavour through artistic expression tells us more about our evolution, our history and what it is to be human than any other subject. Yet pupils choosing it had dwindled to below a thousand offering an excuse to the DOE to remove it from the syllabus.

Instead of banishing such an enriching, mind-expanding subject, wouldn’t the answer have been to promote it, inspiring a new generation to understand how we’ve translated our experience and expressed the mysteries of the human soul since time began. I’m saddened that the voice of protest hasn’t been louder and surprised that we’re complacent about our once great education system being reduced to a set of tests that exist solely to judge whether children are equipped with basic employment skills.

History of Art teaches us far more than what has passed, instead it offers us a profound understanding of ourselves and our evolution that’s essential to our future. We should be fighting to expand our children’s horizons not reducing their view to a focus only on what’s in front of them.

The history of human expression isn’t irrelevant and its up to all of us to ensure that the next generation are as engaged by how we’ve celebrated and visualised our world over centuries as they are by Instagram today!