Students’ Attitude Towards Studying History and Teaching Practices

As an academic subject taught in schools, history provides infinite opportunities to develop analytical skills, value judgment and expression of creativity. But the actual classroom reality tells a different story. The linear approach to history teaching makes the subject extremely dull, monotonous and burdensome to the students. It is this attitude towards history teaching which breeds the perceptions of history being a non-utility subject, having no relevance with the present or future. The present paper synthesizes the findings of an empirical data collected to study the attitude of students towards history and the scope of creativity in history classrooms. The data were collected through classroom observations and questionnaires in three different schools of Delhi. Data analysis highlighted that majority of students did not like studying history or pursuing history as a career choice. Classroom observations found history teaching too much textbook centric and unrelated to students' experiences. Content loaded and rigid methods of teaching history were the plausible reasons for students possessing negative attitude towards history.