Teaching History

Description

Six essays included in this volume present interface between ‘academic’ and ‘experiential’ and between teacher and the ‘taught’ (both students and contents). All authors shre their first hand experiences of teaching history to school students or such students who do history in the first year of their collegiate programme at the undergraduate level. We get to read ‘An Insider’s Account’, ‘A Classroom Experience’, a mother’s travail of taking a teen-aged son out of ‘boredom’ of studying ‘sST’ (Social Studies, including history), and so on. These essays embark upon the hazardous venture of discussing parameters of ‘scientific history’ at a time when the professional scientists are raising question marks about ‘science disciplines’ being ‘scientific’ on the one hand, and the neo-colonial powers are sharpening their onslaughts on the teaching of ‘social sciences’ on the other. In the process, nuances of ‘scientifc engagement’ get accentuated. Teaching that blurs the distinction between myth and history and skirts the prime concern of ‘explanation’ of historical processes is considered ‘unscientific’. History is considered a ‘scintific discipline’ because it permits itself to be questioned and does not take a stubborn recourse to stating that it reveals nothing but the absolute truth. The ultimate goal of teaching history is to produce a ‘thinking mind’ and a ‘thinking being’. Is that the reason why this discipline is in the direct firing line of the neo-colonial powers?

K M ShrimaliFormer Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi.

VikasGuptaAssistatn Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi.

Mahima SinghAn Intern at the Bellevue Arts Museum, Seattle (USA).

Smita SahgalAssociate Professor of History, Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi.

Pradeep Kant ChoudharyAssociate Professor of History, Deshbandhu College, University of Delhi.

Shalini ShahAssociate Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi.