History



History

Introduction

History is very deep, analytical and vast subject. It contains lot of knowledge and information in it. History is incomprehensible and difficult subject for students. There are many different reasons behind it. The main reason which is mostly seen is that history is full of knowledge and teachers usually focus on giving knowledge to students whether they are gaining that knowledge or not. Due to too much information students are not able to absorb it and they feel that history is boring subject. To make it an interesting subject many approaches can be adopted to make students learn history effectively (Stearns, 1998).

What do students need to "know" about history?

It is a very basic question but it is hard to realize what students want to know in history. Many courses of history are made on different kinds of history like international history, national history and culture focus history. What students prefer is to learn history in a story form from which they can easily get the moral and analyze the situations which took place in the history.

There is a constant debate on what students should know in the history. Some people focus on facts and prefer that to become a good citizen a person should also know the constitutions. Some prefer that students should know history as a part of struggle. It depends upon every individual how they perceive history and think what students should know. Students must know the basic and fundamental things which cover both facts and historical habits in mind. The reason behind maintaining this balance is that history tells the past of our life and has high forces which have huge impact on the modern world.

Role of Rote Memory in Learning

Rote learning is a technique which is used to memorize things and it is based on the repetition. This means that a person will be able to recall things more quickly which are repeated the most. There are some alternatives to rote learning like active learning and associative learning. Rote learning plays a good role in learning things but at the same time it also has many disadvantages. In rote learning the main focus is on the learning of things, understanding and analysis is not required. Rote learning is mostly used in the learning of dialogs, facts and figures which does not require the analysis, critical thinking or understanding of things (Eugène, 1958).

Universities, colleges and schools do not prefer rote learning as it does not create a good impression. In rote learning students only focus on memorizing things instead of understanding and analyzing it. Rote learning is also not useful in the long term, people forget things if they stop repeating it. According to many researches it is found that rote learning is also one of the reasons why students are not able to memorize history. Usually less than forty percent people only know some basic things of history. The reason behind this is that for learning history students do rote learning which works for the ...