In June 2019, 90,378 students sat the AQA History GCSE, but for some strange reason it is commonly regarded as one of the more ‘boring’ subjects. Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I can’t help wanting to change this perception of my favourite subject. Therefore, I, along with some of my peers, set up a history society for all the year 11s as a place to celebrate and share our love for the subject, in an attempt to fix this cruel and unfair stereotype.
Sofia, one of the students that co-founded history society, shared with me the idea that she wanted to use the club to create the ‘opportunity to debate controversial opinions’ and help herself and her peers gain ‘different perspectives of world events’, an idea that is essential to studying history effectively but often overlooked when studying in school and whether you’re wild about the World Wars, frantic about the French Revolution or devoted to the Domesday Book, history society has something for you.
Last week marked the first full session of history society, but it took over a month of work to get to that point. With all the changing coronavirus restrictions as London moved between different tiers and national lockdown, we have all had to work closely with multiple teachers and adapt our plans as we went along. Despite all this, we managed to have a successful online session via Google Meets, where we covered a wide variety of our GCSE topics through a quiz as well as debate on the results of the Potsdam and Yalta conferences that commence our Cold War course.
This virtual session was a relative triumph, but don't just take my word for it: Shreya Kumar , a year 11 HBS student who was wise enough to come to the club, described this ‘amazing extracurricular opportunity’ as both ‘interesting’ and engaging.’
Whether your passion is history or geography, maths or english, it is without a doubt a great idea to think about setting up your own club or society and I would highly recommend you to do so. It will help spread your enthusiasm and you’ll most likely end up learning something new too.
Eve Nicholls
