History
The study of whom we’ve been, and how we got to where we are is vital to understanding our place in our ever-changing world. If we as individuals and a society want to understand our place in the modern world, to ground ourselves, we have to look to the past. We question, we investigate, we answer and we tell stories. We understand and it is the understanding of the past that is integral to a good understanding of what it means to be human.
History is inescapable, it is as diverse as we are and that is what makes learning and teaching it fascinating and fun, there is something for everyone. Historians specialise but if you want, for example to study art, science, politics, anthropology, or geography then look at History. History gives us tools for analysing and explaining problems in the past; it is an essential tool for problem-solving in the present and future. Any career that rewards clear thinking, good writing, articulate speaking, and the ability to ask and answer complicated questions will value History. So what do we teach?
Do only totalitarian governments dictate what we teach in schools? Governments come and go but the study of the length and breadth of our past means we can see them with perspective.
“The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there” L. P. Hartley
Pam Mintoft