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Reading the article in the Guardian this week, it struck me that his thoughts on 'what every child should learn' may differ to what we may find, let's say 'important', north of the border. Historian is involved in two panels currently discussing how history should be covered and supported under Curriculum for Excellence. So we thought she'd be perfectly placed to supply us with her top six 'what every Scottish child should learn'. She said no. She is nice, so did also explain why...

We should never ever stop insisting that our children have a right to learn their own history within a wider context throughout their school careers. Nor are there many more eloquent and passionate advocates for the place of history as a thrilling and essential antidote to national myth-making than , as he illustrated once again in this week. I read his piece, nodding violently at almost every point. Until I got to the end. To the list.

Oh dear.

It is astonishing that a man who delivered a whole should still know so little about the diverse, contradictory and complementary trajectories through the past experienced by our various ancestors in these islands; that he should genuinely believe, as does, that the southern English version of events is the natural and definitive model of the past through which all others must be measured (and found wanting).

But it is the idea of the list itself that bewilders me, simply because this is what attracts attention as we assert our own preferences - "imagine missing that out!" Meanwhile, the debate which Professor Schama really wants to have about the dwindling place of history in the English national curriculum is shunted to the side.

So I won't do it. I won't make a list of my top six essential moments in Scottish history. You no doubt have your own anyway and the usual suspects will be there, among others we might debate until our children are off to whatever future we have left for them. The joy (and the hard bit) of the new is that teachers are free to teach whatever they think is best, whilst ensuring that each child is exposed - oh, how marvellous! - to Scottish history within a wider context. I'm sure they don't want historians spouting off, though they may want to work with us to deliver the very best for our children.

However, there is a debate to be had about the 'what' that the new curriculum might encompass. Not a list, but a framework, if you like. It is already well established that the personal and the local is the best place to start with our youngest children. But I believe that, after that, they should be exposed to Scotland's past across the ancient, medieval, early modern and modern periods; that they should have an opportunity to reflect, at certain points on what they have learned, so that they can understand the order in which events and trends come and assess the relationship between the Scottish experience and that of other places and cultures; and that encouraging themes - Scotland in the wider British and European context; war; the impact of changing technology; nationhood and identities, for example - is a far better way to get the best out of the curriculum than mandatory 'must-dos'.

But if I did want to be prescriptive about one thing in this particular time and place, to allow us to tackle a continuing problem in contemporary Scottish society, it would be that the history of Scotland's engagement with religion, in this, the 550th anniversary of the Reformation, would be taught in every classroom in the land. Until we get to the point when we can study it because we want to, not because we should.