Challenges of teaching History in Indian School and the role of local history

During teaching history at school and college level for several years, I observed few important believes of students regarding history teaching learning , the most important was that history is a very boring subject, history is not related to our real life there is no utility  of history in their real world ,history merely transmits historical information and is too centered on the text which is required to be memorized for examination.

The content of the text books are unconnected to daily realities and are viewed as providing unnecessary details about the past. There is a perception that not many desirable job options are open to students specializing in the history .Text books are seen as the major source of knowledge this forecloses any possibility of innovation by an active participation of the learners.

The two key factors in the learning process are frequently missing from history and social studies instruction--DISCOVERY and INVOLVEMENT. Stated otherwise, the traditional teacher teaches and the student remains the passive occupant of the classroom.

The student, their associates, and their community--their entire known world--are excluded from the usual secondary school history curriculum. History to the student, therefore, becomes a remote and unrelated subject focusing primarily on the deeds of political figures, heads of governments, and military leaders.

As I have history teaching learning experience at school and college level. I believe this understanding of the context and role enhances my awareness, knowledge and sensitivity to many of the challenges, decision and issues encountered as history teacher at different level will assisted me in coming to conclusion that itis important for the development of concepts in children as well as the application of School knowledge in real life that the formal school knowledge is linked with community knowledge. This increases the relevance of education as well as the quality of learning. working outside the classroom and using authentic historic artifacts and locations will  help pupils feel closer to historic times, understanding the subject more tangibly, and will increase their engagement in learning through enquiry based learning.

 Local history will provide children with an opportunity to work like young historians and develop a real understanding of the nature of the subject as a process of enquiry. So children will have to investigate, and sometimes discover, relevant source material for  themselves. The future history teachers to acquire the competency to understand the learner with their social, cultural and political contexts construct his/ her own knowledge as well as encourage children to construct knowledge. Make learning a joyful and participatory activity. Organize learner centered, activity based, participatory learning experiences.

A local history investigation can involve the whole local community. Parents, grandparents and neighbors can provide resources such as old photographs, newspapers and personal reminiscences for children to study. At the end of the project they can be invited into school to see your children’s work. In this way community do feel stakeholder of student’s development.

So in above discussion we tried to understand the major challenges of history teaching and how by adding local history to the history curriculum can provide solutions to many challenges of teaching history.