Comics can teach history: Educators

JAKARTA (JP): Educators on Saturday discussed ways to make history lessons pleasant for children, suggesting that comic books may be the breakthrough needed.

Frans M. Parera, a lecturer at the University of Indonesia's School of Letters, said comic books could be an important and interesting media for teachers to transfer historical values and facts. "They can deliver serious messages without making the readers bored," he said.

"Besides, it takes people more time to read text books. Modern people are just too busy and don't have enough time to read books full of text," he said at the How to Learn History Easy and Pleasant seminar held by the Grasindo publishing house.

"Comics may not provide complete information, but an adequate amount of information needed by busy people," he said. "If the readers want to seek further and complete information, they can look it up in books."

Parera rejected the suggestion that comics were for children only.

"Comics are for all ages. In Japan, people make serious comics, namely comics on business, politics and other disciplines," he said.

Parera and the other speakers at the seminar, Anhar Gonggong of the Ministry of Education and Culture and psychologist Sartono Mukadis, agreed that history lessons in schools should improve.

Anhar said poor teaching methods were part of the reason that students had a poor grasp of history: "There are too many teachers who only read facts."

He suggested that teachers read as many books as possible to broaden knowledge: "They should improve themselves, they should not only read the books they are going to present in class."

Anhar called on teachers to be creative and experiment with ways to transfer history lessons' messages, and to be brave at interpreting materials. "History without interpretation leads to history without vision," he said.

Sartono stressed that history lessons must be linked with other disciplines so that students find them easier to digest.

"Teachers should do more than give historical facts without making references to real life," he said.

Teachers must also encourage students to ask questions, he said. (05)