History
History is a discipline that inspires curiosity in those who study it. Students are engaged by the choices, dilemmas and beliefs of people in the past. It helps them to develop their own identities through an understanding of what came before them at the personal, local, national and international level and enables them to orientate themselves in time and reflect more critically on the world that they inhabit.
History also encourages students to become confident and questioning individuals who refuse to accept established versions of events without subjecting them to critical analysis. Students learn to ask and answer important questions, evaluate evidence, identify and analyse differing interpretations of the past and learn to substantiate any arguments and judgements that they make. They are encouraged to appreciate why they are learning history and to debate its significance.
Our aim is to deepen our students’ knowledge of past societies, ideas and events and their understanding of how the past has shaped the present. By studying a range of periods our students will develop:
- a secure sense of period (and of the key features and characteristics of past societies);
- a sense of how politics, economics and society have evolved and developed over time;
- an ability to trace patterns of continuity and change across longer periods and to identify the key events and turning points;
- an ability to make connections between and across different periods and societies
- an ability to examine and explain the causes and consequences of events and their significance;
- an engagement with the stories and human drama that gives meaning and emotional connection to institutional structures and events;
- an understanding that humans had to fight for the rights we enjoy today and humans have sometimes caused terrible suffering;
- an understanding of other cultures and diversity.
