The key to improving the quality of teaching History

(Baonghean)The innovation of teaching and learning methods of History has been implemented by the Education and Training sector for a long time through training for teachers and movements launched by the sector every year. However, when it comes to actual teaching, the results are not much, only stopping at demonstration lessons, demonstrations or when leaders and inspectors observe and evaluate. In general, it is just to "cope"! Even in those so-called innovative lessons, both teachers and students seem confused and forced. Therefore, one-way transmission, teachers reading and students copying is still a daily reality in History teaching, becoming a serious disease without an effective cure!

In our opinion, this situation has the following basic causes:

History has not found its rightful place in schools. History is only considered a minor subject in the system of subjects, the number of periods is the least, important exams such as graduation exams, university entrance exams are not much related to History, so students are not interested in studying it. Although the Education and Training sector has set out many good training goals, in reality, the goal of studying for students today is to take exams and find a career in the future. Therefore, the only concern of students is to study which subjects are important in exams, those subjects are considered the main subjects. Perhaps there is no country in the world like Vietnam, where high school students only care about studying Math, Physics, Chemistry, and English?!

When the position of History is not respected, History teachers are only considered as second-class teachers. No matter how good they are, their income is still many times lower than that of teachers of main subjects (because they cannot teach extra classes), and they are not sought after or respected by students and parents. Even some school leaders have a discriminatory attitude. That makes many History teachers lack enthusiasm and enthusiasm, and worse, they have low self-esteem and inferiority complex, which makes their professional skills decline more and more. That is the biggest obstacle to innovation in teaching and learning History methods.

The facilities for teaching and learning History are still inadequate. Although in recent years, the Education and Training sector has spent a lot of money to build spacious classrooms and purchase facilities for teaching and learning. However, most of the History lessons are still "taught without practice" and "learned without practice". This is because of the unsynchronized and patchy investment such as: There are videotapes and documentaries but there is no computer room; There are models and sand tables but there is no subject classroom; There are many maps, paintings and photos but there is no place to store them so they are not exploited effectively...

We are lacking a mechanism to check, monitor as well as motivate and encourage innovation in teaching and learning History. Lessons that involve innovative teaching methods only take place when there are demonstrations, tests, and inspections. Those lessons require teachers to invest a lot of effort. But in schools, demonstrations, tests, and inspections cannot be organized all year round; those lessons are only periodic. Once those periodic demonstrations are finished, teachers return to the orbit of reading, copying, teaching, and learning, which we often call "traditional methods". Because those who invest effort in innovating teaching methods and those who do not invest are ultimately evaluated... the same! At the end of the year, they are still advanced workers, and their salaries are still increased... That discourages teachers who are still passionate about History.

The innovation in assessment and evaluation, which only stops at the idea, has had a significant impact on the innovation in methods - teaching History. The exams for this subject at all levels, including university entrance exams and national excellent student exams, are still mainly testing knowledge learned by heart and memory. If there are questions that are considered open to promote students' thinking ability, the answers are still not open. There is even a situation where public opinion thinks "the questions are one way, the answers are another". With such testing and evaluation methods, in order to achieve good results in exams, memorization is still the safest option for students. Therefore, the one-way teaching method of transmission and copying still has room to develop without being boycotted.

Many people criticize that History has too many figures, events, dates, and places? In fact, if we remove those elements, there will be no history, because history must of course have events and figures. Each event and figure must be associated with space and time, which is the living material of history. The problem is, is it necessary in each exam to force students to memorize figures, events, or recite texts? For example, in Geography, when students are asked to draw charts, the data is already in the exam; when asked to analyze content related to maps, there is an Atlas. So why can't the same be done in testing and evaluating History? When teaching effectiveness is evaluated through exam results, teaching in a way that students can achieve the highest results will be the most suitable method accepted by students. It is the backwardness in testing and assessment that makes students dread History, creating fertile ground for one-way teaching and copying to develop...

Tuan Anh - Hoang Mai