views on senior cycle history - What would you change?

I guess third years are probably best geared to answering that question.


Do they have a certain perception of the subject? Like many students think HL maths or physics is 'hard', do students think the same about history or are they put off by what they hear on the grapevine about essay writing?

Is it a subject that has suffered timetable cuts (less classes allocated to it) due to overall cutbacks? I know it has in my school.

My school back in the day was an anomaly. There were about 90 in my LC year and 60 took History. I was in the minority that didn't.

crappyireland wrote: »

Hi Rainbowtrout, thank you for your reply and great insights!

Yes it's very true that timetabling and cutbacks really play a factor in low uptake.

I didn't even think about students being put off by essay element (thanks - will definitely develop this in my preparation)

On the other hand, history and geography are kind of lumped together as the arts subjects in Junior Cycle. There clearly isn't the same perceptions about geography with about 25,000 taking it for LC, so why are droves doing geography and not history. I know in grind schools geography is promoted as one of those 'easy honours' subjects, is that filtering down into the mainstream at the expense of history?

In my school equal time is allocated to both for JC, history had less time for a couple of years but they are both the same now. We always have 2 full geography classes for LC (approx 20 in each). On the odd occasion we have 3 classes, where our LC group averages 80. History rarely surpasses 10, and 12 is a bumper crop.

Do students see it as a rote learning subject and become turned off? Lots of essays to be learned where geography appears to be more hands on with map reading etc?


On a personal note, I loved JC History, found all of it really interesting except the modern Irish history which was very political and I found that boring at the time.

When I realised that half the LC course would be made up of Irish history (essentially politics to my mind) I said no way.


Even considering history v geography for the LC exam. There are a variety of geography questions : Short answer questions which include fill in the blanks, map reading, statistics. Long questions which include essay style, map reading, map drawing, drawing graphs, analysing statistics. A variety of skills are tested.

In history there's the document question and then it's a case of write three essays. Overall: write like fcuk.

The subject obviously doesn't lend itself to the wide variety of skills like the geography exam, but the overwhelming feeling I get from the paper is : regurgitate as much as you can, as fast as you can about the titles listed.

Just looking at the papers, geography is way more student friendly.

I have found that a lot of students are put off choosing LC history by their parents. There is a perception that it is impossible to get an A in history (not true of course as anyone who looks at the grade percentages can see). I actually think the other problem is that the syllabus in 3rd year is far too long. This turns students off the subject as they are trying to revise for the JC and learn a huge mountain of new material that spans too much time and so is difficult to understand. About 6 years ago this was going to be solved by the "rebalanced syllabus" but this was shelved by the dept.
While there is still a necessity to write long essays, you don't get rewarded for just writing facts. You need to interpret, analyse and make a coherent argument. The fact that students also get to select a topic of their choosing for their research project is another big advantage.
I feel that LC history works as a good springboard for 3rd level as students are given a good introduction into the area of evidence based analysis and research.