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You are here: Home / PGCE History at UEA / Time and Chronology / Should pupils learn the dates of important events in British History? / Views from Students at Hellesdon/Taverham Sixth Form Centre

Views from Students at Hellesdon/Taverham Sixth Form Centre

It’s important to remember the sequence of events and their relevance. Cause and consequence is important, you shouldn’t be marked down for not reciting certain dates but marked down for insufficient answers and data. Too many dates would be bombarding and learning would be boring and parrot fashioned rather than stimulating and educational. How can dates help us in our skills needed for the wider world?

Lisa Price Year 12 student

Dates are important as it is important to know roughly when certain things happened, but dates should not be learnt religiously off by heart. The skill to History is not memorising dates off by heart but to understand the causes and consequences of events and to understand them.

Matthew Allison Year 12 Student

Dates are important but a balance is needed between knowing them and the factual historical events that surround them.

Ben Moles Year 12 Student

I don’t think you need dates in some cases. As you need to know more about the event which happened in detail rather than the dates. It’s more important to know the consequences, problems and other different aspects of the events rather than the dates. It would be very boring if you just learnt dates all the time, pupils would lose interest.

Heidi Barham Year12 Student

Dates are important in History. They are needed to get some sort of idea of the chronological order of related events. They should certainly not be all History is about though. The reasons behind events and the consequences of these events is just as important.

Chris Whitlam Year 12 Student

Dates are important, but to learn dates parrot-fashion would be boring and unskilful. Other skills should be learned.

Terry Want Year 12 Student

History is well important. Dates are well important but you need more skills for History.

Daniel Cox Year 12 Student

History is important for dates. But then causes and consequences are important too. You need to know when things happened but then you need to know the details more. What is the point of knowing a date if you do not know what happened on that date.

Maria Tooley Year 12 Student

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