Young Historians

"Young Historians (India, 2007) is a series of nine films designed, produced and directed by Deepa Dhanraj for the Government of Karnataka for their Edusat programme. Here, children from government schools in Karnataka are introduced to the processes and methodologies of how history is constructed. The films facilitate a creative process of giving students and teachers a lively and relevant experience of mapping history for themselves, by which incremental learning can take place."

It has been two years that I have left school, and 4 years that I stopped going for History classes. 4 years isn’t a long time span, after all, I still remember 1+1=2. But I simply cannot recall the Mughal emperors in order, or name any 3 of the viceroys of India. History classes were classes that required no thinking work, just a whole lot of mugging up and learning.

The way Deepa Dhanraj has introduced a subject like History in her film, is extraordinary. Interactive, exciting, and simple. Introducing a subject like history by asking the students to find out about their own histories, their own family trees, got the point of history across- why do we have a subject like history? The past is the past, why re-visit it? Why study History at all? To document, to preserve, and to understand our past. What lacked most in the history class in my school was reason and exploration. On the other hand, these children, have not only learnt the point of history, but have also learned to question more. The interaction seen within the classroom was immense, children were fearlessly asking questions.

The question that still remains is who is the target audience for the film? Is it finally the children who are going to watch it or teachers? If more children are introduced to a subject as dull as history, the face of the subject shall change. It will no longer remain a boring period in school, but an interesting one. The impact of teaching a subject well can be life-changing. Not many people these days want a career in education and history. But with these kind of movies coming around, and more and more children becoming interested in a subject like History, quite a few of them would want a career as a historian or an archaeologist or even as a history educationist!

Probably if I had been taught history this way, rather than sleeping through class and making my mother help me out with the subject one day before the final exam, I would have scored good marks without having to go through so much trouble. Perhaps I would have become an archaeologist, if the subject interested me enough back then. I believe this series of films should not just be kept for government schools in backward/ rural areas. They should be screened in every school possible. If a subject like history could be communicated using a medium like film-making, the exam patterns, etc. would also have to be changed. Bringing about this kind of a change could be difficult, but the counter-change this (change) would bring about, would be well worth it!