Student’s road to history: new concept of teaching the course

Abstract

This article is devoted to the new concept of teaching the History course developed by the team of authors from Financial University. The course is subdivided into three interrelated structural sections. The course sections are based on the principle of analysis of major points of the Russian civilization historical development in the context of world history. Students are introduced to the principles of working with historical documents, statistic data, as well as other materials providing correct interpretation of focal points of historical process. The authors believe that such arrangement of the course would allow orienting the students’ cognition at development of consistent point of view on their place in history. By means of teaching history in this way, several tasks are solved at once. Firstly, the students eagerly search for their place in the world, that is, two major functions of historical cognition are combined: educational function and self-identification function. Secondly, it is possible to remain in the preset frames of historical education adopted in modern Russian universities. Thirdly, the teaching of history is harmonically embodied into the structure of humanitarian education on the basis of interdisciplinary historical and philosophical approach. Teaching of the History course should eliminate serious negative issues of Russian historical cognition.