On the May 2010 Paper 2, two questions from the section ‘Origins and development of authoritarian and single party states’ asked about ideology using the terms left- and right-wing. Much to the annoyance or embarrassment of many teachers, it seems that students no longer use or understand these terms.
This is partly due to scholarship that argues that Stalin (or present-day China) amy be better placed on the right based upon his policies or, more recently seen, that the socialist component of National Socialism has been underemphasized by most historians. And certainly there were some students who simply misunderstood the questions and charged ahead. But what else accounts for this lack of knowledge?
