LEARNING... TO LOVE IT! SOME THOUGHTS ON TEACHING HISTORY*

I am honoured to have been invited to deliver this address to you. Let me say first of all, that I admire all of you. I have never taught in a secondary school, and I imagine that it takes an enormous amount of courage to try to teach History to teenagers. Teenagers are an odd breed, aren't they? How do you get young people to appreciate History? Why would they care about the past? They are so enchanted by the present! And they are arrogant about the future. So why do they take History? I ask this question on the assignments I set for HPP01 and HPP02, the University of the South Pacific's Preliminary Extension courses on Chinese History and Japanese Politics respectively, for Form 6 level students. Some students wri te, "This is my favourite subject". But I suspect that they're just trying to tabetabe \ Some students wr i te, "I really admire Japan's development and want to learn how the Japanese did it, so that my country may develop well too " , and I think, isa2, such dreamers! But most students wri te, "I am required to take six subjects and this is my sixth. " And I think that History is in trouble if that 's the main reason students are taking it. 2 tabetabe- doing something simply to pleas