EWC’s Bojana Dujkovic-Blagojevic participated in the panel discussion “Why teach history in 2022?” at the 2nd Annual Conference of the Observatory on History Teaching in Europe (OHTE).
The challenges in history teaching are numerous – either due to its complex and philosophically challenging nature, or to overloaded curricula, unrealistic expectations and demands and too few teaching hours to accomplish them.
Dujkovic-Blagojevic talked with Allan McCully, researcher at University of Ulster and member of OHTE Scientific Advisory Council, on how young people can acquire knowledge and skills to act as democratic citizens in diverse and changing societies.
Both panelist expressed how history education in post conflict society is always attracting a lot of interest in the public discourse and discussions, not only among the professionals.
In some areas, like Western Balkans, teaching carrier is not attractive to young people and teachers are aging. One implication of this age gap might influence the modernization in education and acceptance of changes (in teaching style, methods, digitalization in education and many more).
In the end when asked what could be the main message to Council of Europe, Ms. Dujkovic Blagojevic said:
“History education in school might be the most boring or the most exciting school subject. In the center of this process is the teacher. He or she is creating the magic every single day and we must not forget how important they are”.
History teaching has been an important area of interest of the Council of Europe for almost 70 years. The Observatory on History Teaching in Europe is an Enlarged Partial Agreement of the Council of Europe, whose mission is to promote quality education in order to enhance the understanding of democratic culture.