High school science, college engineering, rarely read extracurricular books. In history class, I have never heard of Henan 1942 famine ... Millions of people died, and I know nothing about such a big thing. ..... Understanding the past helps to understand the present. I am a' history blind' and should make up more lessons! "It seems that we can get a glimpse of our history education, especially the shortage of science history teaching in middle schools. This newspaper specially invited Wei Yong, a special history teacher attached to the 11th Middle School of Beijing Normal University, to discuss this issue. At present, education in China has two characteristics: universities are kidnapped by employment and middle schools are kidnapped by examinations. Rescuing middle school students from the "hostage" situation requires comprehensive education and social reform, as well as the wisdom and determination of all sectors of society. Obviously, this will not happen overnight. As a middle school history teacher, what you can do is quite limited, but it is not impossible-at least some students can be free first. For example, science students who account for about 70% of the total number of students will be liberated from studying history. On the one hand, because they don't take the history college entrance examination, the requirements for the examination are relatively simple, and "liberation" is feasible. On the other hand, because we see some officials, science and technology workers and even principals with science and engineering backgrounds, their views on social issues still remain at the level of middle school history education in their time, and their views on history are basically limited to the scope of middle school history textbooks; Due to the limitation of majors, most science students rarely have the opportunity to actively study history outside the textbooks after class, so the humanistic education they come into contact with in class may determine their spiritual background all their lives. Based on this, "liberation" is necessary. Moreover, education cannot wait until it is fundamentally solved. In this case, the fundamental solution may never wait. The experience of human history proves that the perfect scheme designed from top to bottom is usually not as reasonable as the spontaneous order formed from bottom to top. For society, the best top-level design is the recognition and perfection of spontaneous order. Therefore, I want to talk about my views and practices on the teaching of history of science in middle schools. Critical thinking is the goal that history study should pursue. Why do we need history education? This involves the essence of history. Why study history? There used to be a standard answer: take history as a mirror and you can know the rise and fall. But when you think about it, this answer is meaningless to most people's lives. For example, Einstein doesn't need to know much about history, but he can still make outstanding contributions in his field. Besides, ordinary people, such as a taxi driver, can't drive well without understanding history? Can't computer programmers program well without understanding history? There seems to be no causal relationship. To some extent, this constitutes a challenge to the definition of historical essence in the past. What is this topic for? Most people just want to live a happy and even plain life. The ups and downs of the world and the changes of dynasties have actually had no influence on our personal lives. Unless you want to be a ruler, you must learn the experience and lessons of governing the country. What's the use of studying history? I found that many people around me, relatives, friends and colleagues, don't like to watch those European and American classic movies that I think are very good, largely because they don't understand them. Many classic movies involve historical background and allusions. If you are ignorant of world history and culture, it is easy for you to fail to understand them. If you don't know them, you won't like watching them. This is a great pity. We can say that we have lost a great pleasure in life. Of course, this is only one of the shallow functions of studying history. In fact, the role of history discipline needs to be reconsidered, whether from the perspective of national survival and development or from the perspective of individual life needs and self-development. In this way, when we teach history, we will put down our posture and avoid covering up individual demands with grand narratives. Without an understanding of history and critical thinking, society cannot share the following common memories: where we were, what our core values should be, and which decisions in history are still affecting our lives ... But once we lack this collective memory, people will fall into political apathy, even unable to understand the news and disclosures published in newspapers, unable to understand what a speech is saying, and unable to talk about related public issues with others. History study can not only enrich students' spiritual world, but also internalize those important values that help to form a civil society. Among them, critical thinking that runs through the process of historical learning is the premise of having political wisdom. So, what exactly are we going to teach students? Beethoven used to study history-if you recite it, you will get more points; if you don't recite it, you will get no points. In fact, this completely distorts the meaning of history learning. History is indeed made up of a series of events, but understanding these events is not an end in itself. Historical events are just one case after another. Through these cases, we should analyze and learn how to get wise and reasonable opinions from them. This process, as well as the ultimate thinking ability-critical thinking, is the goal that history learning should pursue. After several years, even if students forget the details of historical events, they will not forget the way of thinking in analyzing cases, which is the purpose of learning history. What Baidu can learn is definitely not the real value of history teaching. Examination-oriented education largely bypassed the real essence of history and made a fuss about the fur of knowledge. For example, some college entrance examination questions let you rank the four historical events: the Sino-Japanese War, the Sino-French War, the Reform Movement of 1898, and the Boxer Rebellion. If the arrangement is correct, points will be given; if the arrangement is incorrect, points will not be given. In other words, even if there are several topics to examine historical ability, they just pretend to think freely under the prescribed premise. What's the point? Most of these can be solved through Baidu. My experience is that the value of history teaching cannot be solved by Baidu; What Baidu can learn is definitely not the real value of history teaching. Therefore, the direction of our teachers' efforts should be the direction that computers can't replace, rather than competing with Baidu, Google and Wikipedia for information. If we still copy the educational model of the student era into the present teaching, it is equivalent to degrading the history teaching to the level of computer hard disk. That kind of teaching is nothing more than copying a hard disk with a lot of information to students. That's terrible. Teachers are not competitive at all-you can't compete with hard disks. At present, the mainstream computer hard disk has 500 G, and I believe that the human brain can't even accommodate 5 G information at the same time. However, the CPU of a computer cannot organically integrate its stored information and create new knowledge and insights, while the human brain can. This is the most valuable place in the human brain. So what we teach to do work is the ability of the human brain to process information. What kind of ability is this? Studying history helps students to understand the major problems facing mankind today with the profound wisdom summed up from past practice and prepare for the upcoming events. History shows the great experience of mankind from a unique perspective and reveals the adjustments made by individuals and society to adapt to various situations; It shows the painful cost of many wrong analogies or ignoring historical lessons. Students know that ignoring the past may make us prisoners of the past. In addition, students will realize that not all problems have solutions, and they need to be prepared for contingency and illogicality in human affairs. Finally, when they face today's problems, they can be more deeply aware of the diversity of choices and their possible consequences, so as to make responsible decisions in real life.