Following a worrying decline in numbers taking the subject, a new Leaving Cert history syllabus is planned for next year. The class of 2006 is set to see the past in a new light, writes Louise Holden

Someone once said that a page of history is worth a volume of logic, but for many Leaving Cert students, there's no logic to history at all. Endless reading, a long and challenging exam and comparatively high failure rates have damaged history's popularity. Twenty years ago almost every Leaving Cert student in the country took history - now it's only one in six.

Curriculum planners have heard the creaking of the syllabus and a new history programme will land in classrooms in September 2004. This is the last year of Leaving Cert history as we know it. It has served us well for almost 80 years - Leaving Cert historians can point to that fact that a question on the Franco-Prussian War on the 1924 exam paper was very similar to a question on last year's paper!

All lovers of history will celebrate the rejuvenation of the subject. However, it will mark a divide between those who took the old course with its perceived lack of objectivity, its gender bias and its obsession with militarism and politics, and the new breed of young historian who understands that women did play a part in history, that not all change was down to a figurehead and that, as Napoleon Bonaparte put it, history is "a set of lies agreed upon". The principle underlying the new syllabus is that the study of history should be regarded as an exploration of what historians believe to have happened, based on an inquiry into the available evidence.

Next year's history students will learn that the study of history is closer to the study of literature than logarithms - it's all about interpretation, viewpoint, bias and documentation. The new curriculum, for example, may well include the theories of controversial Holocaust revisionist David Irving, as an example of how history resides in the eyes of the historian.

The new history syllabus places far greater emphasis on self-directed inquiry. There has always been a research component in Leaving Cert history, but in the past students were required to learn their research off by heart and reproduce it in the exam hall. This left considerable scope for plagiarism.

Now students will be required to submit their research projects earlier in the cycle and the process by which they arrived at their thesis will be easier to track. The ability to research and produce an original script is a critically important skill at third level. The new history syllabus promises to provide students with a unique glimpse of the academic world beyond school.

Personalities punctuate history, and the likes of Rasputin and Mussolini are hard to forget. However, the current Leaving Cert syllabus is overwhelmed by large political personalities, giving the impression that all change comes from the top.

Next year's history syllabus will take the spotlight off some of these figureheads and bring the common man and woman back into the picture. The National Council for Curriculum Assesment states in its syllabus overview that it is time to "recognise that historical study is not just concerned with the powerful and the influential but with the ordinary and the anonymous".

The truly mighty are almost completely toppled - in the first draft of the revised syllabus Daniel O'Connell was erased from the programme. He was rehabilitated after complaints from the committee, according to committee member Professor Mary Daly of UCD, who represented the heads of the Irish universities.

The key objective, according to Professor Daly, was to give students a more holistic view of history and an ability to apply learning methodologies to any, but not necessarily all, historical periods on the syllabus.

"Students should not be required to learn enormous wedges of history. That style of learning leads to the kinds of question-spotting that the history exam has been reduced to in recent years. The new syllabus offers a greater choice of topics in more manageable chunks. It will give students a far greater depth of understanding."

Ultimately, however, the new syllabus is longer than the old one. Its bigger cast and wider focus means that educational publishers will have to prioritise.

Hubert Mahony of the Irish Educational Publishers' Association concedes that some areas will be neglected in favour of others - the new course is just too broad for any publisher to handle in its entirety. "The new syllabus provides early modern and modern options and my feeling is that there will be little material produced for the early modern topics."

Fortunately for students who are more interested in Martin Luther than Martin Luther King, finding quality resource material is less of a challenge than it was five years ago. Use of sources other than books, such as newspapers, the Internet and audio-visual material will be a key component of the new syllabus. In fact, students will be examined in documentary analysis - the Leaving Cert history paper may one day have an aural dimension.

The new syllabus should undermine the contention that history is not a useful subject in the information society. There will be less of what Kevin Myers describes as "republican mythologising" and more critical interpretation of the information available. It should go a long way to preparing students to become good historians, rather than skilled exam forecasters.