History teachers to meet in Malta

As a history teacher I’m definitely not objective when I say that history is (or at least should be) a very important part of any child’s education. It’s a subject that teaches thinking, promotes healthy criticism towards all sources of information and gives the student, whether he be a school kid or an aging professor, endless possibilities to dig deep into the lives of past generations and to understand the man (or the woman) of the past.

History also is a tool for building national identities and strengthening ties between nations. This is the reason why the European Standing Conference of History Teachers’ Associations, EUROCLIO, was established in 1993. It’s an organisation which aims to support the learning and teaching of history by sharing and exchanging knowledge and professional experience.

As a member of the Finnish History Teachers’ Association I got a newsletter some time ago, mentioning that the next annual EUROCLIO conference would this time be held in Malta. On March 20-26^th 2006 history teachers from around Europe will meet in Dolmen Hotel (which, if I’m allowed to say this, looks stunningly beautiful!) and under the topic of Using History Skills and Concepts to Promote an Awareness of European Citizenship will participate in different workshops and visit schools, among other things.

All in all, the draft program of the conference looks very interesting. From my point of view the most interesting program items are the ones that deal with teaching history in Malta. After reading Mr. Leonard Grech’s short article on the matter, I suspect the values and ideas of teaching history are about the same as in Finland. However, it’d be professionally quite enlightening to discuss the differences and similarities of teaching in two such different cultures. (On the other hand, Finland and Malta do share some aspects of history, both having a position between the Western European tradition and a strong other power – for Finland the position between Europe and Russia has always been central, and I suppose for Malta the same would be the position between Europe and the Islamic world.)

In addition, such a conference would probably help in creating contacts between different schools. In the senior high school where I work, for example, there has been an interest in getting some sort of international cooperation programs going on. One idea was to combine three small EU-countries and work in a wide variety of topics (including languages, history, geography and so on). My suggestion was that these three countries should be Finland, Ireland and Malta. So far finding appropriate schools to participate in the possible project has been a bit difficult, because we’re trying to find partner schools from outside programs like Comenius, which usually concentrate on the learning of languages.

Having said all this, it’s clear that attending the conference in Malta would be very interesting, both in a personal and professional sense. However, I don’t think I can participate this time around. Unfortunate, but such is life sometimes. In any case, I still have plenty of professional years to look forward to and I’m sure I’ll be able to attend one of the EUROCLIO conferences in the future (and visit Malta another time).