Teaching History

 

A very important indicator of how each society is organized is the way they teach their own national history and global history, particularly at the primary and secondary school level. A lot of controversy on this question has emerged in countries like USA, Germany, Japan and India (to name a few). Papers in this Sub Theme could analyse how both state sponsored and private institutions and publishers in a particular country promote history teaching. It would be interesting to see if they have changed over time and if so under what stimulus. A comparative study across countries would be extremely useful. Studies of this issue could throw much light. For example, in India an effort was made after independence to promote scientific history, using standard protocols of the discipline accepted globally, replacing colonial and religious communal stereotypes based narrations. It is a major issue, which needs to be seriously studied as the kind of ‘history’ that is taught, to a great extent determines the kind of future a country moves towards.

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Keynote Speaker

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Shiro Momoki

Emeritus Professor of Asian History,

Osaka University

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The Message by Prof. Momoki

 

Along with other Associations and Institutions on global history in the world, the AAWH has paid much attention to history teaching since its inauguration, because major problems of conventional history were often revealed, in a condensed form, in the sphere of history education.  In other words, global historians do not regard history teaching as a pure matter of pedagogy, although the extents of how university-based professional historians are involved in teaching-tasks, such as textbook writing, teacher credential program, and entrance examination, differ from country to country. The common goal of global historians in Asia, that is, the integration of local, national, regional, and global perspectives, to overcome a deep-rooted combination of Euro-centrism and Orientalism, cannot be achieved without a strong concern with history education.

 

Regardless of the traditions and current situations of each region, all Asian countries are now facing with a new educational issue, like the re-designing knowledge-based didactic ‘teaching’ frameworks toward competence-oriented ‘learning’ models proposed by the OECD and other international organizations.  Even a notorious state-centric education which stresses memorizing for entrance-examination in East Asian countries, seemed to change.  We definitely need to incorporate new perspectives of global history studies in this educational reform so that a mutual understanding and reconciliation among the nations and ordinally people might be greatly encouraged.  To this goal, our Panel 6 is expected to have broad but integrated discussions with the participants.

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