No To History In Primary Schools

I refer to a letter written to The Star today, applauding the Malaysian PM's call to teach History in Primary School.

I am dead-set against it. The fact that the letter is written by a self-professed educationist agitates me further. What type of educationists do we have here?

I am against this idea for three reasons:

1) The children at primary school are already over-burdened with school work. Learning more does not equate better learning. On the contrary, primary school children should focus on building literacy and numeracy skills at this stage, instead of studying more content-based subjects. Yes, things like cooperative learning and inquiry learning should be built into the system instead.

2) Children in primary schools do not appreciate history because their thinking is still very much at the concrete stage - they rely much on the touch and feel to learn. They have much problem handling the abstract. Teaching history to them is likely to end up being another rote-learning exercise.

3) The writer wants primary school children to have knowledge of history. Well and good, but knowledge-based learning is a thing of the past. Children do not need to "learn" knowledge, really. They need to learn process-based skills that will lead them to get whatever knowledge they require, given the easy access to information nowadays.

On the whole, I think there is a need for the public to be educated on what constitutes an education and what learning is all about. Suffice to say, learning is not about amassing knowledge. Our educators and educationists should update their ideas.

Wake up to the 21st century, please.