History.. our glorious past

I recently went through a very interesting article about Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty in a newspaper. People at that time were totally unaware of the great achievements of the most powerful king of Indian history up to eighteenth century in spite of seeing the great creations made by him around us. James Prinsep, a British historian decoded the edicts of Asoka and we all came to know about the great emperor and his empire. This was included in our history book and we used to study about him in school. 

That is what history is,very interesting. It's not something new. Everything around us is part of a history, only we cannot understand or sometimes do not want to know its history. The religious places, the monuments and towers, the buildings and the palaces, the cave paintings and everything that we can see were made by people who are part of ancient, medieval and modern history and our glorious past. 

In spite of studying in science stream, I love history. I like reading about the greatest discoveries of history made by great people who tried to search for something different rather than live the life of a common man. 

But this was not the same when I was in my school. I used to hate history the most in my school life. We had history as a compulsory subject up to 10th standard. And after studying rest of the subjects, it was very painful to memorise the names of the so many kings & emperors throughout the world, the years of their reigns, the boundary of their empire, the years of all the battles fought between them and the date & years of so many other things. I sighed in great relief when I did not have to study history in my +2 standard. 

But now I feel that the way we have to study history in school is not that much scientific and psychological for the young brains studying it. History as a subject in school can be made more interesting. Emphasis can be given more on the subject and content of history rather that the dates, years and other numerical data. No one memorises these after passing history but we are so busy in memorising datas in school life that we cannot concentrate on the subjective contents of history. 

Better we know about the name of the kings & emperors and their achievements, the stages of modern history and the important changeovers & revolutions-- that we can remember even after passing the subject. What is the utility of studying something in rigorous way if we do not remember that afterwards? Commit to memory and vomit that on paper and do not remember thereafter-- this should not go on.

 We are what we are only because of something that is our past i.e. part of our history and we have to proceed towards our future with that. We will not make mistake in our future only if we can remember the mistakes we made in our past and their consequences. We should always keep that in mind.