Interview with Eric Houlder, 2 July 2010

Eric Houlder taught history in secondary modern, grammar and comprehensive schools in West Yorkshire. Eric recalls his fascination with history as a boy and his education at secondary modern school. He trained to teach in 1959 in Leeds and went on to teach both history and archaeology (his first love). He recalls the freedom he had in the secondary moderns to design the curriculum and include as much local archaeology as he liked, freely taking classes out to local sites with only a word to the Head beforehand. He developed industrial archaeology as the basis for CSE coursework in the 1970s and made a large collection of slides for use in class. He made early use of filmstrips in the classroom and used casettes for students to record the oral history of aged local residents. He took on the Schools History Project, although has some criticisms of its approach. He retired in 1997. Interviewed by Nicola Sheldon