A report into primary schooling in the UK will call for lessons in history, geography and science to be removed from the curriculum and replaced by what appears to be multi-disciplinary subjects and project work for example "instead of discrete lessons in history, design and engineering skills, pupils in York might do a project about the city's architecture encompassing all those skills".
If it really does work out that way then this could be a good thing. The study of history shouldn't be in a vacuum. To gain a full understanding you may need to study maps, climate, terrain (geography). You may also need to analyse large quantities of data (statistics) and consider how ancient machinery actually worked in reality (engineering). If that is how they could change the study of "history" then that, i feel, would increase the understanding of students and increase the relevancy of history to young minds.
At my final year at primary school my teacher, a Mr Saunders, took this project based approach to learning. We were allowed to study and research topics of our choosing and write up our findings in a project book (i did about 17 actually, i've always been prolific!) thus covering history, research, interpretation, presentation and design. And this was in about 1981 so he was very far-sighted!
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