The Goals of History Instruction

Ehich Goals, Why and How?

Abstract

Since the 19th century coexist three trends in history instruction: the traditional, the progressive and the pedagogical and they all have legitimate, but conflicting goals. While none of the trends can avoid the ideological selection of the history contents, has the pedagogical trend, which focuses on the development of basic historical concepts and thinking, the best chance of avoiding political manipulation of history education. The Slovene history curriculum (2011) comprises the general goals of all the three trends. However, there is no clear consensus to the main purpose of history instruction. There are decisively too many objectives and standards for each topic and each grade and there is too little connection between them and the general goals.