While learning history, it may not seem as instantly useful as other subjects because, unlike other disciplines like science, history does not produce tangible results. It does, however, play a significant part in comprehending contemporary societies, trends, and norms as well as how civilization has developed to become what we see today. It serves as a first stage in the process of comprehending the past, how it affected the present, and what goes on in the world. The purpose of teaching for historical knowledge in secondary schools is discussed in this essay. When teaching history in secondary schools, we find that students come to class with their own ideas on how the world works and what causes us to behave the way we do presently. Some of the ideas prove to be useful in helping the students understand history while others create problems since they bring with them misconceptions on what used to happen in the past and how it influences life today. For students to have a better understanding of anything they are learning, the presentation of factual knowledge and important concepts in the subject goes a long way in ensuring people understand what it is they are learning while also removing the misconception and out of place ideas that they come with to class. Teachers are urged to address the ideas of the students so that they are in a better position to explain and teach the right concepts to provide the right kind of understanding as to what history is. In some cases students characterize the learning of history as the absorption of knowledge and data that is from the past and is in no way connected to their lives in the present.
The concept of evidence lies at the heart of history as a subject and the explanations given to support the evidence go a long way in helping students understand why things happen and what caused them to take a certain course. In this line, the key concepts in teaching history for understanding in schools involves acknowledging that students come with their ideas about what history is. This provides the right kind of knowledge works to help the students understand history, while giving them the explanations and showing of evidence where applicable. It also contributes to align their minds to what is real and what is not real and ends up correcting their notions about history from the beginning. Everyday ideas about history can make the learning of history for students very challenging. Sometimes different stories are told about the same piece of history and students tend to think that if there are two stories, one of them has to be wrong. The thinking processes that students use to help them understand which versions are right, determine if the students have the right concept about history. Some tend to think that if there are two dates to the story, one is wrong while others believe that major events in the piece of history help to define when it occurred. Teaching students to look for the right kind of sources and to ask the right kind of questions about the past helps them gain a better historical understanding. When students change their ideas on how access to the past is gained then there is a progression in their line of thought and what counts as evidence. The student's notions start to change, and they start to progress to better ways of thinking about history and finding out what is true and what is false about the past. Thinking about different factors that contribute to changes in history is termed as the progression of ideas.
Second order concepts are what give shape to history as a discipline, and they include time, change, cause, and empathy. Time and change are paramount in the teaching of history and are measured by the use of dates. Students use these dates to give the order to the past regarding sequence and duration. It helps them understand the processes in history such as urbanization and changes in the attitudes towards the Europeans and Americans which happened over long durations of time but not at one particular moment. Sometimes features of history do not follow a clock time understanding. Sometimes segments of time are clamped together in history such as processes and affairs that might seem to belong together in history are combined when referring to a particular time in the past. In this light, some of the centuries may seem shorter in history than they are in the actual sense according to the documentation of events. In this case, dates help students figure out what happened where and at what time in history. Knowing dates and being able to use them depends on the knowledge of some of the records that are concerned with a particular time.
For students to gain historical understanding change is the other concept that teachers should bring across to students. Most of the time students think change is involved with events happening at present which brings them away from the idea of gradual change in situations. It is important they understand that historians are under the task of choosing themes they write about since they cannot document on everything at once and in this stance only can they begin to understand about patterns of change.
Exercising empathy in explanations regarding history is the third concept that teachers should use when teaching for historical understanding. Showing what folks did in the ancient helps students make logic of their philosophies about how the universe works. By using empathy, students can understand that individuals in the past did not all have the same way of looking at situations like we do in the present day. In this case, teachers should help students understand that beliefs and values in the past were much more different. Empathy, in this case, can then be termed as understanding past institutions and social practices that took place back then and the way people saw things.
The most familiar topics in history include the World War II, civil rights, slavery, American Revolution and the suffrage amongst others. All these issues can serve different purposes for different people. If there was ample time, all these could be taught to students at which point they would be left to pick from the variety of topics and decide which one they wanted to pursue further. In today's curriculums, history is regarded as an academic subject and is taught purely for the purpose of helping students pass their exams. History does, however, need better justification in that educators need to agree to the fact that the need and the use of history as a subject in schools are not the same as those of academic history. Sometimes we find that history is taught to enlighten students on the democracy and political practices which is done through lessons in civics. Following this educators have agreed that learning how the government works and how leaders are elected is not enough but more should be taught about how governments work, how to be citizens and how to engage in behaviors that are common to active participation in the democratic society. A concept of historical literacy is needed to be able to remind ourselves what is most important in history education. In this case, students should acquire the following to ensure they are in a better position to understand the history that is taught to them. Firstly a comprehension of history as a manner of viewing the world is paramount and involves understanding the fundamental concepts that make information and facts about the past probable. Second is a set of dispositions that include the finest reasoning for the stories that one chooses to tell. An acceptance of the fact that we may be needed to tell different tales than those we prefer and that people in the past should be accorded respect same as that which we demand as human beings. Lastly, students need historical content that is mostly arranged in the form of a past that can be used to help them understand history better and distinguish it from their view of the present. History is also found to be normative and compels children to want to learn more than what is narrated from the family members and friends. In learning and teaching history, historical consciousness is required where history tries to meet a certain standard of truth in the stories and the arguments to the truthfulness of these stories. Many children think that one can only really know anything by having been there to experience it directly and they learn how to tell the truth by thinking of a fixed past. Most of the times they believe that people in the past thought like us but dressed differently and acted differently when student are left with these ideas to themselves then they have no understanding of history at all. When learning history it is not enough to be able to answer questions about the past or knowing that people thought differently then, historical literacy requires dispositions that are concerned with the truth and arguments about the past and what took place then.
When students find that they leave school without carrying great importance to the fact that what they narrated about the past is well founded then they do not understand history. If there are no concerns for the place where they acquired their knowledge and whether their arguments are correct and lack respect for the people in the past they are still not historically literate. History education should make a difference in the rational behavior of children, and if this does not happen, then they have learnt nothing important. When children have the historical understanding, they can understand that asking a certain question about the past means they have to endorse to certain values and ways of thinking. Teaching for historical understanding means the educator has to take into account the students thought processes and their rational ethics. Historical literacy then requires deep understanding that which changes information of factual nature to valuable knowledge. It requires the use of certain concepts that are concerned with the content of history and how best to help the children understand what they are learning. This type of literacy also requires clarification as to what level involves both writing and reading knowledge, but in both cases, it is plain knowledge that the student should understand the claims brought forth about the past by way of knowing enough significant history to be able to follow what the others are saying.
Historical understanding brings about a lot of good that people rarely ever think about. When children are taught to understand history, then they are in a better position to acquire certain skills that proves useful in their learning and in other matters. They gain the ability to become better assessors of evidence while also being able to assess past examples of change. The reason as to why we study history is so that we can gain access to all the past human experiences and to gain habits of the mind that can be used to think about the past intellectually. Some history depends on personal taste and what people prefer, but in children, this begins to take place after later on after they have gained considerable historical literacy to able to decide on which they would prefer to pursue.
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