An Introduction to Teaching for Understanding (TFU) History
--Peter Seixas, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia

Most teachers and students can readily identify what is most deadly about the study of history in schools: the meaningless parades of names, dates and events to be memorized. But in running quickly away from that prospect, it is a bit harder to define what it is that we actually want from history lessons. One response is “engagement.” We might “engage” students in memorizing historical names, dates, and events through a Jeopardy game. We might “engage” them by telling fascinating stories about the past… or by dressing up as characters from history and acting in role. Each of these has the possibility for engagement. But each still begs the question, why learn history? Why not tell fictional stories, stage fictional drama, have a science quiz? “Engagement” is not enough of an answer: we must be “engaged” for some further end. What—if anything—is important for us in learning about the past?
In contemporary culture, we are faced by a series of driving questions whose answers help us to orient ourselves, in terms of who we are, what we are doing, and how we relate to others. These questions of historical consciousness include the following:

1. How did things get to be as we see them today? Which aspects are signs of continuity over time and which, signs of change?
   
2. What group or groups am I a part of, and what are its origins?
   
3. How should we judge each other’s past actions, and therefore, what debts does my group owe to others and/or others to mine?
   
4. Are things basically getting better or are they getting worse: progress or decline.
   
5. What stories about the past should we believe?
   
6. Which stories shall we tell? What--about the past--is significant enough to pass on to others, and particularly to the next generation?

These are questions that historians deal with, with nuance and complexity based on years of questioning, thinking, reading and study, but they are also questions that all of us must deal with in one way or another. In the complex, multicultural society that we live in, the answers are not easy nor “given.” The role of school history is less to provide set answers, than to help students gain the tools to deal with these questions in more knowledgeable, thoughtful, and sophisticated ways. They are questions that we care about. So it’s not the case that they don’t need real answers. They do. It’s just that different people, with different perspectives, are likely to answer them—with good reason—differently. And that is why simply providing students with one set of answers, or helping them to do well on a Jeopardy quiz (or Dominion Institute questionnaire), or teaching them one narrative of Canada’s past, may be important, but it is not enough: we should not set our history standards that low. Teaching students to deal with big questions that help them to orient themselves in time, is what we mean by “teaching for understanding history.”