What is History?

[Rafflesiac]

F for hunter-gatherers

[Bloble]

Interesting. So you'd structure it around the history of power and human governance, with a mild Eurocentric focus? I suppose if this were a Western school it would make sense to leave out most history East of say, Turkey. Civic History does have a bit of a ring to it.

I don't recall ever having been taught about actual politics in high school, so this Civics class must be either a recent addition or not present in the Canadian curriculum (or present but too boring to remember).

[Dullahan]

history at the secondary level is and has for a long time been failing at teaching the history of our country (our institutions, our systems of law and governance) in ways that aren't, as any high school kid here could tell you, fucking boring as shit. australian history is consistently the least enjoyed part of the HS curriculum - you ask the kids what they like, it's the 'flavour' units, WW2, Russian Revolution, Nazis, US New Deal. my conviction is that this does not have to be the case. it's not an inherent flaw in the subject matter - as the typical settler-colony anxiety about having no real history (which so often manifests as the stupid, hysterical mythologising of really very minor events) would have it. it springs from a failure of vision on the part of the authorities who design the HS curriculum, a failure to grasp that teaching history has any real purpose beyond helping people appreciate hollywood blockbusters and knowing what Anzac Day is supposed to be about

[Walnut Sparks]

I don't recall ever having been taught about actual politics in high school, so this Civics class must be either a recent addition or not present in the Canadian curriculum (or present but too boring to remember).

I don't know when it was established down here in Eagleland, but I'm pretty sure it was long, long before I went to high school. In any case it was a normal, required part of the curriculum by then.

[Bloble]

Yeah Canadian History sucked.

[Mattias]

I don't recall ever having been taught about actual politics in high school, so this Civics class must be either a recent addition or not present in the Canadian curriculum (or present but too boring to remember).

It was definitely there, I remember one classmate questioning why we can't just stop terrorism by nuking the entire middle east.

[Ratman]

Here's a scenario:

You are a fresh-faced History teacher given several one-hour classes in a perfectly ordinary public high school to teach History to, let's say, middle-to-high schoolers. For whatever reason, let's say the poor state of today's public education, this is the only History class in the entirety of the school's curriculum. You are under no pressure to conform to general content requirements for history classes, so long as you can justify your lesson plan, so no need to include the mainstays and major world events taught in every class, or whatever local history your geographical location prioritizes.

Which parts of history would you teach your students about?

I'm going to teach art history in spirit, even though I'm not supposed to teach art history, because art history is what I understand best. I use lots and lots of visual aids for showing students what cultures looked like and what things they were especially eccentric in. The schedule is pretty much split into national history and world history, as it usually tends to be, with breaks to talk about full histories of other places in short, single go each.

Inevitably, when we get to Constantine the Great, I will find myself having to actually explain Christianity to students in theological and historical sense because just saying 'and then everyone was Christian' and moving on wouldn't do. I might as well do the same with other religions, which will inevitably force me to always explain to students how people thought, an then I look at my notes and find that I am herding cats. Being able to go in depth on everyone's perspective on every issue would be wonderful, and the easiest way to color the matter outside of literally using color, but I doubt we have the time for everything.

In regards to national history I at least go out of my way to explain that every single era in this country sucked in this or that way, and the situation of national identity and state legitimacy we find ourselves in at this point is more or less a pentuple lie, but we have culture that's our own, so that's probably the easiest way to define ourselves, and that's why I've been teaching culture. This might be haram to some people above, but I cannot lie.

[Mcjon01]

i would try to effect a fusion of secondary-school history with what in the US - as I understand it - would be called civics, which doesn't really have an equivalent in australia. in that i would centre the overarching structure of the curriculum around the formation of our system of government through history. beginning from the political thought of athens through the development of roman law, post-roman developments on that, the origins of English monarchy and the general history of political change in the british isles, the reformation, the rise of constitutionalism, the english civil war, the development of westphalian statehood, the history of overseas space-appropriation (i.e. colonialism), the formation of colonial systems of governance, the enlightenment, american & french revolutions, Federation in australia, the development of our particular institutions of political representation and decision-making, the complex relationship with the motherland over the 20th century, the republican debate, and finally the effects of changing technology and mass media on the structures of power.

so you have this overarching narrative which you would cover in sequence multiple times: you would do it over years 7-8, again over years 9-10, and finally over years 11-12: with every repetition going to a new level of detail, new nuance, opening new avenues of critical approach. this is needed so that people who move out of the history stream in year 10 - it's usually compulsory until then, but after that people who plan on going into STEM will usually drop history in favour of a sci/math unit - will at least come out with a certain level of grounding

the ultimate aim is, of course (i can hardly say this without scare quotes) to "create informed participants in democratic society". i am extremely pessimistic about the possibility or even the point of this under present circumstances - largely due to the aforementioned effects of mass media - but i suppose there is some value in teaching the students why it's pointless

anyway, throughout this cycle you have to put here and there some of the 'sexy' units, notional civil-religion components, where you study shit like ww1 or the nazis or the ussr or the civil rights movement - things which aren't actually relevant to students but which parents and official bodies will insist you put in there, and which give you an excuse to laze about while you screen Schindler's List in class hours

That’s exactly how history education works in America except strip out everything that isn’t the founding fathers

[Dullahan]

sounds like you have similar problems to us

[Wallacia]

dunno if the poll is on or not, but i voted for others. since history to me is what people think has happened, regardless of whether it really did or not

[Ideofago]

Events in sequence.

[Five_X]

I can't believe I posted in this thread when I was still an undergrad

[TomPen94]

Source Material

I can't believe I posted in this thread when I was still an undergrad

You can't believe you dared to post in this thread when you were still an undergrad?
Or you can't believe it's been so long since you were and undergrad and posted in this thread?

[aldeayeah]

A tangle of narratives that tries to explain how we got to the current point, legitimized by an underlying collection of historical artifacts/texts.

[Nanashi(kari)]

That which is passed down

[Five_X]

You can't believe you dared to post in this thread when you were still an undergrad?
Or you can't believe it's been so long since you were and undergrad and posted in this thread?

Both (now PhD)

[tsugumi]

I'm aware the correct answer is an inquiry into the past, but "things that happened" feels correct, even though it's wrong.

Love this comment though and I kind of want to steal it for future use

I don’t know, why don’t you just tell me why I’m wrong instead of making me jump through these hoops first

[Ideofago]

Signatures exist for a reason.

[Ratman]

I can't believe I posted in this thread when I was still an undergrad

I can't believe I posted in this thread pretty much right before I began to study the faculty of pedagogy (art and czech language) for purely economical reasons (I'm bored of working in warehouses).

- - - Updated - - -

anyway congrats on the phd fivers!!!

[tsugumi]

Signatures exist for a reason.

much to think about

Although to be perfectly honest, I'd rather steal it for a story that involves the Classique TM setup of "character who doesn't know a lot having many conversations with a character that does"