by Joe David
World history provides the knowledge that enables us to live intelligently. When armed with a broad historical overview, we can collect essential information needed from the past to understand the present and grasp the possibilities for the future. In short, by understanding the past, we can predict the future by comparing past patterns to contemporary trends and identify their possible outcomes.
The teaching of history should not be limited to a moment or a culture (e.g., the Vietnam War, Eighteenth Century France). Such an approach only provides an isolated view of man and his world. Expanding history, on the other hand, to include the entire human saga sequentially from the beginning to the present provides what’s needed to open the mind to the variations of human drama in a rich and fulfilling way.
For history to have meaning, historical events must be integrated in an orderly manner of cause and effect. Ancient Rome could never have known glory if it hadn’t built on the remains of ancient Greece. And America could never have become a great industrial nation if it hadn’t followed the Enlightenment. The present is linked significantly to the past. Together they lead to the future. Teaching history means teaching events in an orderly way.
A teacher, on the other hand, who teaches disconnected historical events, jammed with names and dates, to be memorized for a test, is doing a child a grave injustice. Such teaching has little respect for a student's conceptual development. By teaching history sequentially -- identifying cause and effect -- a teacher demonstrates how one event leads to another and affects all levels of the human experience, as a result. Most importantly, he teaches what ideas endure and fail, and why. In the process, students experience the grand panorama of life with civilizations rising and falling, nobler or more corrupt than what was.
For maximum intellectual benefits, it is important that the material isn't arranged artificially around some fashionable idea or controversial current event of no historical importance. Such material only distracts from the relevant and leads to intellectual confusion. Therefore, lessons should be organized around reoccurring and essential themes, as true today as they were yesterday, often pollical in nature. By identifying such themes and emphasizing them through the selective presentation of salient facts, a teacher brings the entire human saga to life and makes it flow logically!
For example, from the Neolithic period to the present, there has been the clash of two forces: to conquer and control and to break away and be free. History is replete with examples. From slavery among early totemistic tribes to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, from the intellectual freedom of the ancient Greeks to the United States of America, these two forces have been opposing each other, both from inside and outside the empires.
To illustrate these forces in action, the teacher must show their different shapes -- the similarities, the dissimilarities, the strengths, the weaknesses -- from the earliest nomadic herdsmen to modern man. Teaching history means teaching important fun damental patterns. It means taking an idea, woven through time, and giving it life. Jacques Barzun summed up how this can be done in his book Teacher in America. "How then do you pour a little bit of what you feel and think and know into another's mind? In the act of teaching, it is done by raising the ghost of an object, idea, or fact, and holding it in full view of the class, turning it this way and that, describing it - demonstrating it like a new car or a vacuum cleaner."
To provide full dimension to important historical patterns, a teacher should expose the student to all the relevant facts, which reinforce the theme. This is done by highlighting the lifestyles, the government, the social and political structure, the music, the religion, the philosophy of the time and draw them together around a central theme with literature, movies, slides, field trips, music, tapes, and other supportive tools as aids. The purpose is to demonstrate clearly how one idea affects all aspects of life, how one political or religious or philosophical attitude can turn a historical moment into a human celebration or a tragedy.
History presented like this ceases to be just names and dates, but instead becomes an exciting, relevant experience. It unites men of all ages and cultures by exposing the basic forces that moves them. But most of all it teaches values by teaching what is possible or impossible, what is good or bad, and what brings happiness or misery.
History taught chronologically and linked to a primary theme enables students to understand the world and their place in it. Without this background, their ability to grasp human events is stunted.
The teaching of history should not be limited to a moment or a culture (e.g., the Vietnam War, Eighteenth Century France). Such an approach only provides an isolated view of man and his world. Expanding history, on the other hand, to include the entire human saga sequentially from the beginning to the present provides what’s needed to open the mind to the variations of human drama in a rich and fulfilling way.
For history to have meaning, historical events must be integrated in an orderly manner of cause and effect. Ancient Rome could never have known glory if it hadn’t built on the remains of ancient Greece. And America could never have become a great industrial nation if it hadn’t followed the Enlightenment. The present is linked significantly to the past. Together they lead to the future. Teaching history means teaching events in an orderly way.
A teacher, on the other hand, who teaches disconnected historical events, jammed with names and dates, to be memorized for a test, is doing a child a grave injustice. Such teaching has little respect for a student's conceptual development. By teaching history sequentially -- identifying cause and effect -- a teacher demonstrates how one event leads to another and affects all levels of the human experience, as a result. Most importantly, he teaches what ideas endure and fail, and why. In the process, students experience the grand panorama of life with civilizations rising and falling, nobler or more corrupt than what was.
For maximum intellectual benefits, it is important that the material isn't arranged artificially around some fashionable idea or controversial current event of no historical importance. Such material only distracts from the relevant and leads to intellectual confusion. Therefore, lessons should be organized around reoccurring and essential themes, as true today as they were yesterday, often pollical in nature. By identifying such themes and emphasizing them through the selective presentation of salient facts, a teacher brings the entire human saga to life and makes it flow logically!
For example, from the Neolithic period to the present, there has been the clash of two forces: to conquer and control and to break away and be free. History is replete with examples. From slavery among early totemistic tribes to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, from the intellectual freedom of the ancient Greeks to the United States of America, these two forces have been opposing each other, both from inside and outside the empires.
To illustrate these forces in action, the teacher must show their different shapes -- the similarities, the dissimilarities, the strengths, the weaknesses -- from the earliest nomadic herdsmen to modern man. Teaching history means teaching important fun damental patterns. It means taking an idea, woven through time, and giving it life. Jacques Barzun summed up how this can be done in his book Teacher in America. "How then do you pour a little bit of what you feel and think and know into another's mind? In the act of teaching, it is done by raising the ghost of an object, idea, or fact, and holding it in full view of the class, turning it this way and that, describing it - demonstrating it like a new car or a vacuum cleaner."
To provide full dimension to important historical patterns, a teacher should expose the student to all the relevant facts, which reinforce the theme. This is done by highlighting the lifestyles, the government, the social and political structure, the music, the religion, the philosophy of the time and draw them together around a central theme with literature, movies, slides, field trips, music, tapes, and other supportive tools as aids. The purpose is to demonstrate clearly how one idea affects all aspects of life, how one political or religious or philosophical attitude can turn a historical moment into a human celebration or a tragedy.
History presented like this ceases to be just names and dates, but instead becomes an exciting, relevant experience. It unites men of all ages and cultures by exposing the basic forces that moves them. But most of all it teaches values by teaching what is possible or impossible, what is good or bad, and what brings happiness or misery.
History taught chronologically and linked to a primary theme enables students to understand the world and their place in it. Without this background, their ability to grasp human events is stunted.
Basic Education (A Council for Basic Education publication)