understanding History

ask any medical student what History is, they will tell you history of presenting illness la,Medical history surgical history family history obs and gynae history social history and dunno what else history

Ask a for 4 student what is history, immediately the procerus muscle contract and they say :boring subject

Why? Because in SPM level, no core subject is hated more than Pengetahuan Moral and Sejarah. Why? The way they ask questions in sejarah makes no sense and doesn't allow students to say what they think. It is very Rigid. and it will lead students to think that sejarah is just another memorising subject where all you need to do is to memorise facts. The question sound like this : Apakah perbezaan antara kerajaan agragria dengan kerajaan maritim?--> this kind of question relies only on memory,it does not measure the maturity or critical thinking of the student at all. And this question is useless to say the least. Why do i say so? Alright, just say the student know the difference between agragria and maritim. So what? What use is this knowledge in today's world? The student may score an A1 for knowing this, and then what happen? The student will forget it, not even a trace of agragria or maritim in his head. Because he or she have regurgitate it onto SPM paper!

Another question that is frequently asked in the objective part of examination is what year some events happen. This is an equally nonsensical question. Take this for example : Pada tahun apakah stamford raffles membuat perjanjian dengan SUltan johor berkenaan singapura?ok, if the student know what year the agreement happen, so what? He gain nothing from it. What's the point of asking this type of question? To test knowlege? What good does the knowlege on when an event occur? If the event occur 10 years later or 2 years earlier, does it make any difference? In the above question, no matter when the agreement between Johor sultan and Raffles takes place, the incident have happened: Singapore is taken by Raffles. this is more important than asking what year it happen!!!!!

while writing this i dah meluap luap because having taken the history paper myself in spm, i find that it can be applied in many ways in our daily life(especially now, when the politics have turned ugly), but due to the way question is asked in exams for so many years, everybody upon graduating from SPM everybody declare: History=memorising=useless.

So, instead of asking, bilakah Malayan union ditubuhkan or siapa yang tubuhkan malayan union, which rely purely on memory, i suggest history questions be more orientated towards the application of the lesson learnt from the historical event. Example :

Instead of asking bilakah malayan union ditubuhkan, the question should ask "Malayan union ditubuhkan pada tahun so&so dan dibubarkan pada tahun so&so. Apakah pengajaran yang boleh kita pelajari dari pembubaran itu dan bagaimana kita boleh mengelakkan kejadian yang sama dari berulang?" These sound more reasonable, at least, the students can use their critical thinking rather than regurgitating out whatever they memorise. They can apply their knowlegde of history, lesson from the history, into today's world.

another question: Instead of asking : Nyatakan kesan rusuhan kaum 13 Mei 1969, we should ask, apakah peranan generasi muda dalam mengelakkan berlakunya kejadian seumpama, or cadangkan langkah langkah untuk memastikan kejadian di atas tidak berulang.

TEaching method should also be changed. I remember last time, in my form 3, my sejarah teacher question everybody regarding history. Her question sound like that:
Siapa yang memerintah Jepun sebelum Meiji?
I find this absurd. Ok ok i know its Shogun, so what? i think, if she want to ask question, ask something like that?
Antara Shogun dan Meiji, yang mana satu yang anda rasa berkesan dalam pemerintahan sebuah negara? Jelaskan.--> this stimulate critical thinking! instead of knowing who perintah who before when!

Putting all in a nutshell, i think its time History teaching and learning method be reviewed. History is important.

Look at our country now, not one of the politicians have learn from history. History shown that external "campur tangan" bring detrimental effect on sovereignity of our country,but yet 1 or 2 politician go around the world, getting help from the US to speak for him when he got arrested, asking the whole world to speak againts our nation's laws , just to become the premier.

And someone in penang trying to show his "kejantanan" by giving seditious remarks about other race during his ceramah and refusing to apologise.

Why did all these happen?

Because they MEMORISE history, they never LEARN from history.

Ask them when british invade Malaya, they will proudly tell u.

Ask them when racial riot happen, they will more proudly and loudly tell you as well.

But ask them what they learn from history, they give u BULLSHIT. Thats how education have failed us.