23 October 2013:
I am ashamed of telling others I am a ‘history student’.
This may be my own personal opinion, but I view history students differently. I view such people as critical thinkers that are able to analyse complex events and deliver arguments. At risk of being called ‘elitist’, history students are different from the rest.Why so? Because I know that history is about thinking; it is utterly a thinking subject. Yes, content mastery is undeniable, but that stereotype of history being a ‘memorise and regurgitate’ subject is fading fast.
I know this, because I am a history student. I have been through secondary school history, and am currently taking Advanced Level history. And because of what I have gained from learning history, I appreciate the subject a lot.
History teaches people to think. This is probably my third time mentioning this just in the words above, but it is absolutely true. A common claim is that ‘history is boring / useless because whatever happened in the past stays as it is’.
While it is true, that’s not what history is about. History is also about the interpretation of the past. It is about giving your take on historical events. Therefore, the two most commonly used question words in history would be ‘why’ and ‘how’.
These two, unlike ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘who’, force people to think. The four can be settled with a simple one-line answer in many cases. That is near impossible to do for ‘why’ or ‘how questions. You need to explain things.
And this is what trips many people taking history, including me. Back in secondary school, we were taught the PEEL method of structuring paragraphs for our history (and social studies) essays. I would falter at EL, which stands for ‘explanation’ and ‘link’.
My problem would be that I end up writing about the 4Ws. My explanation statements consisted of little or no ‘why’ and ‘how’ answers. Eventually, I did manage to solve this problem by the O Levels, not without a struggle.
However, it seems like this problem is coming back with a vengeance at the A Levels. My latest history exam results are evidence for it. I received an ‘ungraded’ grade, which in other words means that it is really lousy, the bottom of the lot.
That was a real blow to me, in fact, it still is. I still cannot comprehend why I scored so badly. However, this is the reason why I would start off by saying I am ashamed. I do not feel like I should associate with the category ‘history student’, because my results say otherwise.
It’s been a while since the release of exam results now. And I’ve been thinking: what went wrong this time? The most obvious problem would be that my essays went out of point and I didn’t answer the question.
But why? (See, I’m thinking, okay.) This is the tough part, though. Actually, I really don’t know why I would underperform by so much this exam. It wasn’t that my history results for the mid-years were sterling, but they were acceptable.
There are about 12 months left to my A Levels next year. I cannot carry on like this (allusion to Gorbachev, heh). So yes, I have taken some action, the first of which would be to take history at Higher 1 level instead of Higher 2, something like AS level in the UK.
I made this decision not without hesitation. When I first decided to take history, I knew that taking Higher 2 would be challenging, since I am foreign to half of the syllabus. H2 includes international history and SEA history.
Because I took elective history in secondary school, I am only more familiar with international history (the part on Cold War). SEA history would be completely new to me, since I did not take pure history. However, since the school allowed 4 H2s, I decided to try.
And so I did. My initial impression of SEA history was proven wrong: it wasn’t as boring as I imagined. In fact, I’ve grown to like it. Nevertheless, there were certain aspects of the SEA history module that I did not enjoy.
SEA history is studied via case studies of various countries. However, I am not used to this kind of studying history. I prefer to focus on a certain event (e.g. Cold War), instead of a theme (e.g. nationalism) and then zooming on countries as case studies.
In theory, actually, it isn’t that hard. Each case study illustrates a point relating to that theme. What is required would be to pick out relevant case studies as evidences of one’s arguments in essays.
However, to even tidy up the whole mess of case studies, that takes a lot of time. Next would be to identify what each case study demonstrates. Only then can one use it when answering essay questions.
I don’t have that time. I know: everyone has 24 hours, if others can do it, so can I. However, I am unable to cope with doing all that (for SEA history), doing things for international history, and three other subjects.
Therefore, I decided to drop SEA history. I will be left with international history next year. And yes, I really hope to improve my history grades. I need to get at least a D for next year’s common tests.
History is a passion of mine. As I mentioned above, history taught me how to think. I am really interested in history, and therefore cannot afford to do any worse than this time. The only way is up.
I would really hope that, by March next year, I would be able to proudly say that I am a history student, without feeling embarrassed that I am shaming history’s ‘reputation’. I want to be able to demonstrate personally that history isn’t boring and useless.
That aside, I also wish that more students would take history next year. I really don’t understand why history is so underrated as a subject. Maybe very little will concur, but I really think that more students should be taught how to think.
TTFN.
If you were to notice, this post of mine has no fixed direction. It is more of me rambling on and on, vaguely about a topic. This, I realised, is another weakness of mine when writing history essays.