It has not been fully noticed how the educational reform of the 90s affected the already deficient teaching of history. The devalued public education inherited from the 1980s has undergone a change, not necessarily for the better. The change from a subject-based curriculum to one centered on areas meant the disappearance of courses with an autonomous structure such as the history of Peru, world history, geography, economics, etc., and the reunion of all these under the denomination of the area of science. social. All under the idea of seeking the integration of knowledge to achieve a more complete understanding of social reality. Multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity as work aspiration in school classrooms. Under the pretext of a constructivist approach, war was declared on everything “traditional”, and in the name of this the independence of teaching disciplines was assassinated.
A marginal and little-spread work was that of Professor Carlos Barriga (former dean of the Faculty of Education of the UNMSM), where he explained the value of a curriculum by subjects, since he respects the organization of knowledge by specialties, a basic domain for any interdisciplinary attempt. The curriculum by areas responded to the belief that the "parceled knowledge" (subjects) corresponded to the past and not to the present; and that it was better adjusted to the challenges of the future (interdisciplinary knowledge and work). The truth is that there is no experience in the world of interdisciplinary knowledge, without first approaching the basic concepts or fundamentals of some specialties separately.
Furthermore, as the specialist in educational psychology and constructivism, Susana Frisancho (teacher-researcher at the PUCP) reported, it was surprising how the technical specialists of the Ministry of Education referred to the cognitive with a certain disdain:“ learning based on experience, rather than cognitive”. In other words, experience as an element that promotes significant learning, and the cognitivist understood as mere formal processes of the mind. In the particular case of history, the subject was reduced to a memory space, necessary to be aborted in the name of a future where teachers would also disappear, since their traditional role would change. Now his destiny would be to become a "facilitator", "mediator" or "intermediary" between students and the autonomous construction of knowledge. A simplified or poorly understood constructivism by the Minedu technicians, where a constructivist teacher was opposed to a simply "cognitivist" one. The true connoisseurs of the subject know that constructivism involves a broad understanding and use of the student's cognitive processes, since these are the ones on which all human learning is based. Memory is also a fundamental component, never discarded.
The outcome of the reforms of the 1990s has been that of an area of social sciences, where teachers take charge of four or five subjects gathered in a single course, with much less time available than in the past. The teachers of the area, in a resigned way, limit themselves to dedicating a two-month period of teaching to each old subject (history of Peru, universal history, geography, economics). It should be noted that a bimester is basically made up of 8 or 10 classes or learning sessions, for each area. Assuming of course the punctual attendance of the teacher to each class, or the non-interruption of classes for any reason (strike, anniversaries, various activities).
The situation of the history course as seen is notoriously precarious. First because of its non-existence as such, and second because of the few or no signs of change in this regard. The effort of teachers is the only answer to an ideal rather than realistic curricular approach. Well, the technicians in charge of these changes never set foot in the classroom, or have sustained a full course of teaching, under the same conditions as most teachers in the country.
The graduates of the faculties of education and pedagogical institutes of the last 20 years, have been trained in teaching models inspired by a poorly understood constructivism, and with a very low command of content (management of knowledge of the area to be taught). Pedagogical theory overflows teacher training courses, neglecting the correct management of teaching content. There is no good teacher, where form and substance do not complement each other and there is a certain balance (expertise in teaching and mastery of the contents of the course). This last point is a topic rarely referred to when denouncing the crisis in Peruvian education. The trainings sponsored by the ministry only focus on aspects such as didactics and evaluation, but they do little or nothing to guarantee a teacher with sufficiency in managing their course, at the content level.
There is no doubt that rote It has been one of the evils of the teaching of history. But in the name of this, there has been an attempt to erase history as a study discipline and insert it into an unlikely area of teaching, where neither interdisciplinarity nor knowledge of basic concepts of the specialty of history (change, continuity, processes , situation, structures, event, etc.).
The teaching of history faces different problems and challenges, not only in curricular aspects; There are also those of poor teacher training, the gap between academic history and school history, students' reading comprehension difficulties, little family and social encouragement around reflection on past issues and their present implications. , the low diffusion of reading as an early habit. Finally, the almost non-existent research on topics related to the didactics of history and social sciences in general in our environment.
The growing marginalization of the teaching of social sciences and humanities is a worldwide phenomenon, and began with the elimination of the philosophy teaching. Who knows, maybe it will be history's turn soon, if it hasn't already been done, in a way.
Source:lamula.pe