On teaching history

I find myself very interested in history, and am lucky to live in a time when popular history content is widely available via books, podcasts and videos. History in school is often said to be dry and monotonous - full of dates and events laid out in a dry and unimaginative manner. Thankfully, that was not always the case for me.

My interest in history is closely due to a few of my teachers in school. They taught this subject passionately and analytically. They made us think about it, here's one short example.

We were studying about the Harappan peoples and our teacher told us that during excavation, they found buildings with doorways with a very low clearance. She asked the class, what could this tell us about the people themselves? There were many responses and eventually she helped us converge on the idea that it may be due to the fact that the people were of a short stature and hence a low doorway would suffice.

Now, I do not know if this was truly the case with the Harappan peoples but this entire exercise made me look at the subject analytically. It was as though we were searching for clues through the lens of time in order to understand how things may have been. Even now, when I think of history I tend to think in terms of what did the people eat, how they lived, how they managed their sewage and the logistics of their wars.

All thanks to my old history gurus.

tags: #education #history