Britishness has been the subject of more debate in recent years than perhaps in centuries before. Gordon Brown has been the principal political spokesman on the matter, but others, including Jack Straw and Alan Milburn yesterday, have made contributions as well. Their interest is entirely justified by the evidence. The fear that immigration has led to separated communities is widespread. The July 7, 2005, bombings in London have heightened the salience of internal social divisions. Multiculturalism is increasingly regarded as a model that has failed. Research such as that for the recent British Social Attitudes survey reveals that national identity in Britain is weakening. School is obviously the place to inculcate Britishness. And that was the supposed purpose of Diversity and Citizenship, the report commissioned by ministers and published yesterday.

Ministers, alas, should not have bothered. For these proposals, allegedly all about “Britishness”, proceed from the assumption that citizenship, national identity and “education for diversity” are interchangeable notions. What should be an effort to focus on common threads instead places its emphasis on holding up different strands to the light. The language involved is captured by one case study in which a school is cheered for “developing an exciting conceptual offer from 11 to 18, avoiding subject fragmentation and emphasising the importance of developing cultural empathy and critical thinking to prepare pupils for a diverse world”. The mentality is summed up in another instance in which a head teacher is praised for dealing with difficulties between Hindu and Sikh children by use of “his personal biography of being Irish to share experiences with pupils”.

The question for this study, endorsed by Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, yesterday was whether “modern British cultural and social history” should become a “fourth strand” in citizenship lessons after “social and moral responsibility”, “community involvement” and “political literacy”. The answer is that approved sorts of history can come in through what the Department for Education and Skills describe as “ new-style classes”. The topics are: the make-up of the United Kingdom (and devolution); immigration; Commonwealth and the legacy of Empire; the European Union; and the extension of the franchise (including slavery). The teaching should be done within discussion groups rather than anything that smacks of formality. This is highly selective history delivered in a lightweight fashion.

It is hard to believe that it will do anything to promote a sense of what it is to be British. It will plainly do nothing to redress the fact that many white pupils are already complaining, as the report notes, that they have no feel for where they come from. For this proposal is less Elizabeth I and Winston Churchill than Barney the Dinosaur meets the Commission for Racial Equality.

Which is an immense pity. The original drive to place citizenship in schools was a worthy one. The work by the Advisory Group on Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools, chaired by Sir Bernard Crick, was undoubtedly serious. All pupils should leave school armed with a solid knowledge of British history — taught in history lessons — and how it has shaped the institutions and culture of the country as it is today, where decent citizenship lessons could have value. The teaching of Britishness should be sent back to the drawing board. For whatever Britishness may be, it is surely not the mush that is now being proposed for schools.