Malcolm Barker: If the past is a blank, how can we make sense of the present?

We did of course, but not in English. History was our undoing, with even the clever ones failing to achieve the pass mark on Higher School Certificate papers.

We were surprised, indignant even. History had seemed easy. It wasn't, of course, and we needed more than our teacher's notes, copied by hand into our exercise books, to satisfy the examiners interested in our knowledge of the reign of Queen Anne and the causes of the English Civil War. Supplementary reading and thorough revision might have given us a chance, but somehow we were not inspired to the necessary effort.

History, we learned the hard way, is a difficult and challenging subject. After 60-odd years, it remains so, and it appears that many children are able to take an easy option and discard it from their timetables. There are claims that it is a disappearing subject, with 1,000 schools not entering a single pupil for GCSE history this year. Dr Sean Lang, a senior lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University, has called for it to be a compulsory element in the secondary school curriculum.

Michael Gove, the coalition's Education Secretary, wants to revive the subject, and thus kindle interest in Britain's "island story". Simon Schama, the TV historian, has been named "history tsar" to lead the recovery.

All this seems quite bizarre. How can schools drop history? In doing so they are surely depriving coming generations of the opportunity to furnish their minds with wonders. History offers a context for events. It sparks the imagination, it generates curiosity, it engenders pride. With the past a blank, how can anyone make sense of the present?

This point takes greater resonance at Remembrancetide. There were times during the latter part of the 20th century when November 11 seemed in danger of slipping by unmarked. Since then a great revival has taken place, and yet again silent crowds bear witness to the immense sacrifices demanded of the English people during the World Wars. Its place in history now appears to impinge on the national conscience almost as strongly as it did in the 1920s and late 1940s when the recollection of grievous losses was still raw in the community. The same tomorrow, Remembrance Sunday, when the Queen will lead the nation in a two minute silence at the Cenotaph on Whitehall.

It is surely up to our schools to place Remembrance against its historical background, so that succeeding generations may bow their heads in sincere recall of the feats of their ancestors on the muddy fields of Flanders and in the air during the Battle of Britain two decades later.

In our schooldays, there was no way we could have dropped history. But we were the Lucky Generation, born in time to get into grammar schools staffed by teachers who were able to maintain discipline by imparting a delicate frisson of fear. Inattention might result in a piece of flying chalk, misbehaviour an abrupt warming of the palms.

Schools are different now, and so are teachers, to judge from their mass gatherings at union conferences. A tie is a rarity, never mind an academic gown.

Strangely, with some schools unwilling or unable to impress the need for knowledge of history on their pupils, quite the reverse process is taking place on our television screens. History now informs the nation in competition with quizzes, cookery and antiques for a place on the TV schedules, and does so successfully.

Presenters adopt various techniques. Michael Wood ingeniously and felicitously uses the evolution of the Northamptonshire village of Kibworth to illustrate the changes in English life wrought over the centuries.

A smiling Richard Taylor quietly and effectively conveys the glories of our ancient churches, repositories of faith and craftsmanship through the ages, in his Churches: How to Read Them. In contrast Dan Snow, who sometimes works in partnership with his father, Peter, bounces happily around the screen. He once found a perch on a bowsprit to recount the story of a sea-battle.

Other popular programmes have an important historical aspect, including the remarkable Who Do You Think You Are? which proves time and again that nobody's antecedents can be dismissed as ordinary.

Perhaps young people viewing these programmes will find their interest in history kindled, and have recourse to libraries and bookshops, for the onrush of titles of both historical fact and historically based fiction continues unabated. Television had a role in shaping the career of the distinguished historian and broadcaster Dr David Starkey, as he revealed in the Yorkshire Post last month.

He recalled being "utterly transfixed" while watching the Coronation of the Queen. Putting that ceremonial into context drew him into history; the boy of eight in 1953 is now an Honorary Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. Yorkshire schools could perhaps generate interest by including aspects of the county's story into history lessons. There are plenty of sources of inspiration, eloquent ruins like Fountains Abbey and Conisborough Castle, reminders of an industrial past at Manningham Mills in Bradford and in West Riding pit villages, grandeur at York Minster, and humble piety in the Saxon crypt at Lastingham. Then there are our heroes, James Cook, William Wilberforce, Sir Leonard Hutton, and many more.

A good guide to the nation's Ignorance Quotient is The Weakest Link, Anne Robinson's quiz you might catch if you tune in early for the BBC six -o'clock news.

The other day she asked a contestant to name the British Prime Minister who, in the aftermath of the First World War, declared his aim to be the creation of a Land Fit for Heroes.

There was a glum silence and then the response: "Disraeli".

Here, perhaps, was an example of the ignominy awaiting those who opt out of history at school.

Malcolm Barker is a former editor of the Yorkshire evening Post.