With centuries of history to teach and only about a decade to teach it, of course, schools cannot teach students every part of history in depth. Some students are surprised to find what their schools skipped. What topic in history would you have prioritized?
#41
I would say the history, culture, and philosophy of the ancient Greeks are paramount if by that question you mean facts to the exclusion of alternate goals. Personally I feel facts aren't about teaching anything, so much as they are about being able to grade a students output on a numerical scale to allow ranking and competition to be used as primary motivators. Facts, in my view, are static data points that you cannot learn or understand, and must therefore stamp into your memory forcibly. Obviously this in incredibly error-prone, because if you memorise something incorrectly, you lack the understanding of the subject matter to self-correct and can literally come out of school worse than you went in.
If instead the focus is on understanding and actually learning, students can become engaged with the story of the material, develop their critical thinking in mentally linking it to other things they learn, and in so doing train intellectual discipline and rigour as the teacher guides them out of erroneous reasoning. Suddenly the motivation isn't some arbitrary number and showing off / avoiding embarassment, but a genuine interest spurred on by little "Ohhh I GET IT" moments along the way.
Naturally, learning does have other caveats; chief among them the insurmountable limitations of a students intellect. If a child is not intelligent enough for a given level of abstraction, then it will be unable to learn how the governing principles interoperate, and fail permanently as a result. There is no way around that, so this method does carry the cost of students simply being physically incapable of graduating beyond their level of ability. The student can obviously memorise all manner of datapoints, but will never understand why those values are what they are, nor be able to recognise erroneous data, or extrapolate from incomplete data. In essence, a human photocopier. To put it another way: I can memorise the entire cyrillic alphabet, but it won't teach me Russian, let alone allow me to use what I've memorised in a meaningful way like a doing a Russian crossword or translating Solzhenitsyn into my native language.
If instead the focus is on understanding and actually learning, students can become engaged with the story of the material, develop their critical thinking in mentally linking it to other things they learn, and in so doing train intellectual discipline and rigour as the teacher guides them out of erroneous reasoning. Suddenly the motivation isn't some arbitrary number and showing off / avoiding embarassment, but a genuine interest spurred on by little "Ohhh I GET IT" moments along the way.
Naturally, learning does have other caveats; chief among them the insurmountable limitations of a students intellect. If a child is not intelligent enough for a given level of abstraction, then it will be unable to learn how the governing principles interoperate, and fail permanently as a result. There is no way around that, so this method does carry the cost of students simply being physically incapable of graduating beyond their level of ability. The student can obviously memorise all manner of datapoints, but will never understand why those values are what they are, nor be able to recognise erroneous data, or extrapolate from incomplete data. In essence, a human photocopier. To put it another way: I can memorise the entire cyrillic alphabet, but it won't teach me Russian, let alone allow me to use what I've memorised in a meaningful way like a doing a Russian crossword or translating Solzhenitsyn into my native language.
0points
#42
We need to teach fewer specific "facts", such as exact dates and battle names, and more about broader "movements": social, scientific, geographical etc, and how they led to and created various conditions and events we call history. At the same time, we should be as objective and honest as we can that what we "know" about the past is affected by current events, how this knowledge has changed over time, and how it can depend on power, on changes in values, technology, and other factors. In the US, we are still arguing about what the Founders of the country meant, and that was in a time when we have a lot of written evidence. Students should at least be aware that there may be several interpretations of the reasons for and effects of known events, and as they advance in school, and depending on their choice of study, can learn more specifics about these varying interpretations.
0points
#43
Not just a fact, but all. Teaching History as a process, its causes, consequences and development, not just isolated facts. Also, focus on small things: anecdotes, fun facts, anything that allows students to realize people of the past were as human as they are...
0points
#44
Historical facts that are linked to current Holidays.
Like the fact that Valentine's Day has it's origins with Saint Valentine. Back in his time, soldiers were not allowed to marry because it was considered they wouldn't fight as hard or be willing to die for their leader. Valentine would marry couples in secret. When he was caught and held in in prison, people would throw messages of love and encouragement tied to rocks through the window of his cell.
Santa Claus has his origin in Saint Nicolas, patron saint of thieves. He didn't think it was right for the church to collect taxes from people that were already struggling and starving, so he would take the money and return it to the poor. When the church found out and tried to stop him, he'd climb in windows or find other access to return the money to the people that needed it.
Showing the origins can give the holidays back the spirit it was intended to have. It could teach kindness and compassion to people that need it.
0points
#45
Another thing that should be taught is common sense its so dumb how some people vote for duma****
-1point
#46
That the oldest condom was 300 years old made out of leather and looked about the same
-4points
#47
Biology - there are only TWO sexes: Male and Female. And rarely, women bear children with features of both. Contrary to current bulltwaddle by lying propagandists.
-7points