Parallel Histories

Who we are

Controversial historical topics are disappearing from schools. Teachers need support to teach these topics and fear backlash if they do. The result is a challenge for our fraying democracies. Young people are left to learn about defining issues such as the Israel-Palestine conflict from media/social media sources without being aware of any bias of that source. Furthermore, young people miss out on the opportunity to develop their ability to analyse evidence, to listen to others’ perspectives, and form their own informed opinions. These abilities are crucial for young people to become active citizens in healthy democracies and, particularly for those who experience disadvantage, to realising their ambitions. 

Parallel Histories is meeting this challenge. We immerse students in competing narratives on controversial historical topics. We teach them to examine the evidence and argue for different interpretations. In this way, we enable young people to study controversial historical topics and we give schools the confidence and tools to teach these topics. Through equipping young people with an understanding of other communities’ perspectives on these topics and skills and confidence, we build social cohesion and promote social mobility.   

We have proven that our approach works in the last seven years. We have grown to work with over 1,100 schools. We have developed a reputation for balance and fairness in dealing with controversial topics. We have demonstrated we can achieve impact for young people. Now we want to scale to meet the demand for our work.