Finally here I am with one of my favourite topics, "Teaching history Vs Teaching Sciences". So what do you think, should there be any difference in teaching history and other practices. I find teaching history in a class room setup is like making a student ideologically similarly to the one who teaches you. Hmm sounds like a very strong statement ..let me help you in proving my hypothesis.
Personally I feel history is more of inferences and making conclusions than teaching facts. People make a lots of inferences and conclusions based on simple facts which they might have heard or learnt from some source.
Lets take an example of class 5 student, who doesnt have any prior knowledge of history and sciences. I am assuming class 5 is pretty nascent stage and the student is in the state of absorbing facts and to some extent questioning or reasoning the facts.
Enters the science professor into the class, teaching newton's laws and concepts of gravitational force to the student. An average student would question and get all his doubts cleared and would accept all these newtons laws as facts of the nature. An intelligent student might go home and do some work ..but finally he would also agree with the facts and accept them. In the science class, student can use his capability to think and question the facts told to him. He can also make correct inferences which would work. His wrong inferences and conclusion can be easily dealt by a good teacher.
Now imagine a history professor in the class to teach students about ancient history of India. Now just imagine the class room setup and being in the shoes of the teacher for awhile. To recollect and teach students ..what do you do ...you try to remember all the facts about a particular incident and teach and help students understand the topic more succinctly... as a teacher you would also make some inferences (from the facts you might be aware) to teach students ( remember you are making inferences from the facts you have learnt). For the student sitting on the other side, everything which the teachers says would be facts and something which he needs to remember. Also for a class 5 student, there would hardly be any other proper source to learn (neglecting exceptional cases of erudite parents).
So facts+inferences of the teacher become facts for the students in History class, whereas in a science class facts+inferences of the teacher makes students capable of thinking, questioning and not merely accepting as facts, morever the student gets capability of making inferences.
Problem with this method of teaching history is that, if the student is repeatedly taught by the same teacher..then the impact of the teacher on the student would be huge. Student might also become ideologically similar to the teacher.
I will continue discussion on this topic in my next post .
~Happy Republic day !!
