Pupils regularly ask me random questions about a specific period in time. Perhaps they have seen something about Ancient Egypt on TV or have been thinking about the Native North Americans etc. While I feel confident in most aspects of History, very often, unless it is an area of the curriculum, my answer has to be, “that is an interesting question, I do not know the answer but I will try and find out”. The pupil almost always answers me with, “You are a History Teacher, you should know the answer”. To which I reply “Am I supposed to know everything that has ever happened in the world, ever?” 

While I do have a degree in History, and this is following on from a post that Luke Francis has recently posted, by the time you get to University you become specialised in certain areas. This is particularly so in History. Yes I covered some European Political History at University, along with some Early Modern British History and a fair amount of Scottish History, but by the time I was completing my Honours year I was only studying two areas of History - The Early Stewart Kings, which was my special subject and the Viking way of life in Scotland and Iceland, my dissertation topic. Therefore, there are many areas of History that, while fascinating though they are, I have never studied.

I would be interested to find out if this happens to teachers of other subjects. I suspect that it will happen less so to teachers of subjects that have difinitive answers, say Maths for example. History however, along with other Social Subjects, are such that there are many answers to a given question, so long as the answer is fully backed up with evidence. Indeed, History as a subject is so vast that surely it is impossible to expect any one person to ‘know it all’.