I hear so much about the need for history to "demystify the past" or "debunk myths" or "stop romanticising" a particular society or to "stop glorifying" a particular individual. This is horrible for teaching young people. It's basically saying this: "Real life is boring and lame. You have heard rumours of different times and places, where interesting and mysterious things happen. These rumours are false. Everything was always boring and lame. And people back then were stupid and evil." This is no way to win friends for your discipline among the young! What history education desperately needs is re-enchantment. We need to re-mystify or re-mythologise the past. This doesn't mean saying that everything was morally good in the past- far from it. We can point out historical evil. But the worst thing to do is make the past boring. I'll give you an example. Medieval stuff is cool. Kids love it. Knights, castles, crusades, catapults, trebuchets, kings, princesses, all of it. Yet we see a trend towards saying: "Yes, but everyone died from horrible diseases. And everyone was dumb. And peasants were poor." This is done in an attempt to stop people "romanticising the past". But it doesn't work. If we were going to romanticise the medieval period, if anything we could exaggerate the hardship of life. The fact that they didn't have good dental care does nothing to downplay the aesthetic of an army of armoured knights unfurling their banners and charging into a hail of arrows. It even does the opposite. We could say "yes, their lives were difficult and hard. Even more reason to be impressed by their achievements!" Those of us involved in history education - including at the highest levels - need to remember why we got into it in the first place. And hold true to that, so that we can bring more people in.