Do you think history is being taught well in schools? What are you experiences with studying the subject. Is it too focussed on names and dates rather than how and why the world develops?

Some say it's the boring way it's taught stifles motivation to learn about the subject. So the really critical questions is how do we teach it in an interesting way that gets kids involved? What's been your experience in history class?

i think history depends heavily on the teacher

my early history classes were mostly date memorizing and things that did not matter that much

a few years later i had a history teacher that focused on relating the things that happened, knowing how these events triggered eachother and why they happened. he would often ask us to draw a mind map of the various historical "happenings" that we studied and relate them to eachother, explaining how they lead to eachother. i really liked history that year

The classical way of teaching students by standing in front of a blackboard and noting down important points of an era is archaic. It is far more efficient to use modern technology privately to absorb those information.
I think it would be easier to learn those things by using those technologies and teaching students how to use them. Students could use parts of their school time, as well as their homework time, to learn the things they need for the class, not the other way around.
That's my experience anyway. I don't really learn a lot in history class itself because I find it far easier to learn those things before going to class, abusing that to get an advantage over other students, thus getting the best grades.

Depends on the teacher.

- - - - -
I remember my history teacher...

He makes us form a group of 5
Gives us a topic
We teach the topic to the class
Makes us take down notes while a group gives the lecture...

All of the quizzes are open-notes so no one fails. (we learn 3 chapters then get a quiz worth 35-50 points)

In the test, no open notes, l0l.

He also gives us assignments with big points'n'stuff

That guy is still teaching... he is the best.

- - - -

He makes us focus on the names and dates. He says those names and dates will give us clues on what happened'n'stuff.

- - - - -

History is boring when an old teacher gives a long-ass lecture.

Our teacher made us lecture ourselves so we can... express ourselves'n'other stuff.

- - - - -

Hmmm... history teachers must do what my teacher did.

Call random names and ask them questions.

- - - - -

History class was the best.

That teacher gave a lot of chances by making quizzes open-notes, assignments to pass, etc...

I remember what that teacher said the first time I met him

"If someone says "he failed me" that person is wrong, that person made himself/herself fail."

There's no point in learning history if you have no interest in it.

What I did was go to sleep, works for most

Well I go to a montessori school so my history "class" (for any of you that know the Montessori method, there aren't really any classes) is a lot different than for example, pusga's. I find the way my teachers teach history is rather entertaining. We have our "lecturing" but it's also taught through simulations and things like that. We have our tests and our note taking and our typical school stuff.

The way I learn is a lot different than most others here so I'm not too helpful to the topic itself but I felt like posting my own experience with the class being discussed.

You can't make a subject interesting or not. You can attempt to teach it more interestingly, yes, but even that greatly depends in how much effort your student is willing to put into it.

About the dates: Some dates are significant up to some point.
It's all relative. In cosmology or biology, you might be talking about millions of years where little changes. In war history, days or even hours can be significant.

I think that of most events since the dawn of civilisation, at least the century is significant. The life of composers, for example. If you know the century in which they lived, you can compare their style to other styles.

Of some events, the year is significant. I think about the world wars. The world wars definitely sped up technological advance in certain fields (medical field, for example), and it is important to know when this happened.

Of other events, the month is important as well. Take the March into Russia of Napoleon's army in 1812: it is significant to know that these events took place during winter.

Of some events, even date can be important. Armistice, for example. Or 9/11.

But the problem is not the dates, but the overemphasis on dates. I don't give two shits about when; I can look that up in a history book. I care about the why: why did the event happen, why is it significant in history, why should we bother remembering it happened? The importance of history is not in that it happened, but the lessons that can be gleamed because it happened.

History is often boring because there's no application to it. I was fortunate that I had a great teacher in 3rd grade who really made history feel relevant, or at least engaging, inspiring a very large interest in history. History became a way to delve into the mind of a genius, a tyrant, a general, a leader, a slave, or just an average person in a distinctly far from average environment, in an era long gone, rather than an index of dates and events separated from relevance through time and place.

The problem is that it's hard to grade students on abstraction, particularly at a young age, yet people want to teach history to kids early. The sacrifice is that the important, meaningful lessons that history can provide get silenced before they can even be taught, due to an ill-timed decision to teach.

History should be told, rather than taught, at a young age. Foster the desire to know more about history by making it a story that is forever being written. Kings and queens of old, battles won and lost, romances more deep than any fiction has ever touched, adventures into a world yet discovered, inventions that shaped the very landscape around them, spies and intrigue with the entire fate of humanity at stake, all moments in the tapestry of our history. Being told stories, not for their knowledge, but for their enjoyment, is the first step that needs to be made to truly teach the value of history.

Completely agree, Oracle.


But isn't history the most interesting subject in the world? It's the story about how we got to where we are today and about what forces and great people shaped governed it. The story of us. Better than any fiction.

History class can definitely be interesting because history is the most interesting story in the world.

Also, motivation is largely determined by interest, so, I think if you teach it in an interesting way, you'll generate motivation naturally.