If we don’t learn from our mistakes, as the old saying goes, we are doomed to repeat it. We can’t deny the significance of learning history in school. This lesson teaches students the history of their country and the world, the hardships people have faced, the mistakes people have made. Acknowledging the importance of history lessons, you may think everybody enjoys it but if you were to ask most students, they would probably say history class is boring. But what exactly is wrong with history lessons? Personally speaking, I feel like I am choking in a sea of battles and treaties and dates during history lessons. I’m more a peaceful kind of person so I’m not particularly fascinated by conflicts. Instead of wars, if I were to be taught the history of art and science I think I would enjoy history lessons more. So how can we make history lessons great again? As everyone knows everybody has different interests so why not include various topics in history just to make it more appealing.
If history of art was taught in schools we would look at a work of art’s symbolism, materials, and colors, and we could learn about the culture that produced it. For instance, the two paintings above are full of symbols relating to ideal marriage during the fifteenth century. The young woman’s portrait contains symbols of purity and virginity (the unicorn) and fertility (the rabbits), traits that were necessary for a Renaissance woman at her time. Understanding the symbolism and details in these portraits helps us go back in time and see what was important for these people, the situations and environment they were in, how different their time was from ours… By learning the history of art we start to look at things from different perspectives.
Imagine not knowing why the wind blows. Or what gravity is and how it works. Well not so long ago all of these were unknown. People used to think the world was flat -some people still do but still- and that earthquakes were messages from the gods. So through history of science we witness what the world was like in the past. As we learn how other men and women -who thought outside the box- made new discoveries, we learn new ways of thinking . Every day we witness many things . Beams of light or odd ground movements. They seem ordinary to us, we don’t often think much about why or how those things happen. By learning the history of science we see people who were inspired by the nature and made sense of it.
We usually learn history as a series of wars, or economic collapses. Instead it should be taught more as a series of advancements, discoveries, and positive events. Only learning the conflicts between their country and the other countries may have subconscious effects on students. This education system may raise students who are biased because they learned that country A was a rival of his/her own country in the past. So I feel like everyone would benefit if history lessons included history of art and science. This way history lessons will be great again…
Bibliography:
https://www.fpri.org/article/2007/10/why-teach-military-history/
https://www.studyinternational.com/news/should-we-rethink-how-history-is-taught-in-schools/
https://geekdad.com/2014/04/10-reasons-history-of-science/
https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/teen-blog/renaissance-portrait/blog/studying-art-from-the-past