Modern Historical Education: Trends and Prospects

The reforms of the 1990s and 2000s in the education system led to the fact that the process of education and upbringing found itself in a deep systemic crisis. Particularly strongly crisis phenomena have affected humanitarian subjects, in particular, such a subject as history. School and university history education has ceased to meet the requirements that are set for it. And what are these requirements?

In my opinion, historical education should first of all bring up patriotism and humanism in schoolchildren and students; To develop respectful attitude to the culture, traditions of the peoples of their country and the world. On the other hand, historical education should be aimed at developing the skills and abilities of students and students to analyze the facts and events of not only the past but also of the present time, to be able to see the historical perspective. Thirdly: historical education should not be separated from the basic principle of historical science itself, namely, historicism.

Historicism is the principle of cognition of things and phenomena from their origin, formation and development in concrete historical conditions. In this regard, I would like to note that modern textbooks completely ignore the principle of historicism. By them it is not clear how, when and why this or that event arises, this or that fact. As a result, reading modern textbooks gives rise to the feeling that all historical events and facts arose on their own, lived and live by themselves. Relations between them can not be traced. Thus, the main thread of the world's historical development of mankind is lost, not to mention the fact that the heap of events and facts without explaining the cause-effect relations leads to a distortion of history itself as a process where everything is interconnected. Neither that nothing emerges from nothing, and nothing disappears without a trace - this is how historism can be characterized. Namely, this principle is absent today in almost all modern history textbooks. Why?

The trouble is that the authors, who make up modern school history textbooks, have to take into account the initially flawed two concentration system of learning, when the same events, facts, stages of development, expound both for the first concentration (grades 5-9), and for The second - 10 - 11 classes. In addition, the Unified State History Exam is built more on a factual basis than on an analytical basis. Students who take the exam on history have to memorize more facts, events, dates, personalities than to reflect on why this event occurred, why precisely in this period of time, and not sooner or later, and what consequences it brought. As a result, the connection between events and facts is lost, and students cease to understand and find cause-and-effect relationships between hotel facts, personalities and events. And after all, this is what constitutes the basis of history; Is the main law of the entire historical development of mankind.

The loss of the historical perspective is one of the main negative trends that have arisen as a result of ill-considered reform of the school system. Another negative trend is that today the most important educational function of school history education has been lost. Until now, since the 1990s, the principles of historical education have not been worked out. If in the Soviet school historical education was built on the principles of citizenship and the communist worldview, today there is no such thing. Instead of giving the school principals guidelines, the teachers have to deal with the fact that they put (in a figuratively speaking) "candy wrappers" before them, giving them out as "candy." In words, everything seems to be beautiful and tempting - to develop patriotic feelings, to cultivate tolerance, humanistic outlook, to form a civil position. In fact, everything comes down to verbiage, as it is not known on what basis and on what basis these feelings should be formed, what examples serve these purposes. After all, even for a simple assessment of the historical personality, the materials of the textbooks are not what is lacking, but they are simply not there.

Thus, today there is a negative trend in the entire school history education, which can be characterized as degradation. Overcome the process of degradation is quite possible. For this, first of all, it is necessary to abandon the two concentric training systems and move to a linear system. Secondly: to take as a basis for historical teaching the stadial theory to the approach to historical development. Thirdly: create conditions for not formal, but real historical education and upbringing. And, it can be done only when the traditional exam is reintroduced instead of the notorious USE, and instead of simply memorizing dates, events, facts, personalities, start giving real knowledge to schoolchildren on the basis of the historicism principle, educating them to determine cause-effect relationships, Both facts and historical personalities. This approach is quite possible, and moreover, it is simply necessary. Only in this way can we overcome all the negative consequences of the school reform of the 1990s and the zero years.

Promising in this regard is the direction in school history education, as a transition to a linear system of education, but not for the textbooks that are available today. We need very different textbooks in which not so much facts will be gathered as the main points in the world historical development and the history of our country should be determined.

Summing up, it must be said that the main trend of modern historical education so far is that it is far from solving the main tasks that are:

1. Formation of new teaching methods based on the stadial theory and the principle of historicism.
2. To pay more attention not so much to remembering facts as to be able to give these facts a correct assessment, to determine the historical perspective and to model the historical past, to analyze the present and to foresee the future.
3. Go from the unfounded slogans to the real system of historical education, based on historical examples.