history essay contests for high school

history essay contests for high school

The Significance of History Essay Contests for High School Students

1. Introduction to History Essay Contests

History essay contests for high school students are an excellent way to get young people to think historically. As a way of encouraging the study of history and of promoting historical thinking through written expression, an institution sponsors a history essay contest. Tens of thousands of high school students enter history essay contests each year. The vast majority of those students embrace history essay contests as a fine way to connect what they have learned from their history teachers with issues of concern both in their own communities and in the larger world. The students see the contests as a way of providing themselves with a voice in the past and the present. They study the past and all its complexities. They look carefully at their communities and at their schools. They use their knowledge and their written words to address compelling public issues. Their work rises above the merely personal, and often results in a public dialogue that benefits many people in their respective communities. And as serious historians, the teachers of high school history students have over the years heard many stories about history essay contests and their impact on the participating students and their schools.

2. Benefits of Participating in History Essay Contests

Finally, an essay contest is a test of the ideas that students cherish. Although writing about these ideas forces students to think about them more deeply than is usually the case in everyday life, contests also create an opportunity for them to share their ideas and beliefs with others. What’s more, many people outside the classroom, including twenty-one-year-old college students who judge the essays, are fascinated by high school contributions. Therefore, talented students can influence the beliefs of others and receive feedback from them as well. We believe that nobody, student or otherwise, can escape competing arguments about the historical events shaping our lives. Writing a history essay constitutes unique preparation, knowledge, and sharing of ideas worth developing. According to this reasoning, we are convinced that other learners will benefit from such essay contests to the same extent. It is time to initiate such high school history essay contests on a regular basis.

Attempting to write a history essay for the first time involves careful preparation, research, and a great deal of thought. However, it can also be a rewarding experience in many different ways. For instance, while a student is doing research for their essay, they often come upon some useful and fascinating information that is not directly related to their essay, but which still helps them to learn something new. When writing an essay, students have to take a stand on an issue and try to persuade others to accept what they say. At the same time, they also learn that not all questions have cut-and-dried answers. By writing the essay, they learn how to dispute claims on both sides of their question and to present and counter the arguments of the various historians whose views they study. In addition, by learning to dispute claims that they personally feel strongly about, they also learn to tame their own feelings and to respect the views of others, even when those views run strongly against their own.

3. Impact of History Essay Contests on High School Students’ Academic and Personal Development

As the student continues to develop and master these fundamental academic skills, the inevitable and welcomed result is that the student usually becomes a more confident and better person. Students often come to an increased realization that they too are capable of greatly improving historical knowledge and potentially anything else. The self-discipline that is an essential aspect of the student’s participation in the academic contest is usually transferred to all phases of the student’s life. The self-discipline that is developed through the act of research, judicious consideration of the source materials (the historical record), preparatory organization in clear, concise, and analytical writing helps the student to re-adjust his or her priorities in life. Such that he or she, under little to no guidance, will on his or her own consider completing homework, reading, or pursuing answers to still wondering questions of import-struggle become more self-embrace.

However, one of the most important benefits of participating in history essay contests is quite simple. Through their active participation in history essay contests, those ordinary students who often inhabit the middle of the academic spectrum usually discover their own taste for history much to their own and their parents’ surprise. Surprised, often the result of the kind comments from family, friends, and even a few teachers, about the student’s writing style and insightful content.

Through their active participation in essay contests, high school students discover that history is a living subject. They learn first-hand that history is a vital and fascinating story. They utilize and improve their writing and analytical skills. These skills often help them do better in their other academic subjects. As a result, it is not unusual to discover that the best history students are often also the best students in the other academic subjects.

4. Strategies for Success in History Essay Contests

The path to the student’s goal of improvement of that discipline in writing history essays includes preliminary navigation necessary to understand the assigned topic, development of a tentative thesis statement or hypothesis incorporating student views on the subject, research utilizing some established solid advice on the process, preparation, solid writing, and related steps necessary to submit an agreed essay or written historical argument. How does one achieve success in essay contests involving writing history essays? What are the key elements of a quality essay with historical arguments? What constitutes a strong argument? The answer to these questions can mean prestige, potential scholarship or financial rewards, and professional opportunities for students who either win or place in the available history essay contests. Of course, all students would like to have a winning essay or to earn the max or nearly max reaction paper grade. The rewards may then be valued differently but are better understood if we understand the nature of historic argumentation within the history essay. What makes for a history argument of quality in history essays?

Completing a quality history essay can sometimes be a challenge, even for brilliant students. Usually, outcry results from a deadline set at the high school level by the teacher as the final deadline for submission of all assigned essays or papers in the class. This requirement for concurrency or synchrony is entirely appropriate to protect the teacher from a deluge of assignments at the last possible moment. It insures an equitable division of the burden. Nevertheless, most students would benefit from an opportunity to emphasize the discipline of the earlier draft and resubmission process involving the steps that lead to improvement of the student’s paper. These steps involve the use of advanced preparation, techniques of research, summarization, and synthesis at what may be described as a “major league” level. Failure on the part of teachers to use this technique either concurrently or in earlier school years promotes a form of “sabermetric” regression without the accompanying solution in assisting the student to learn the lessons of comprehension, mastery, and to gain the habits of scholarship that “past generations” took for granted.

5. Conclusion and Future Implications

Yet, despite this national trait, the last three decades have been marked by a decline in the number of history enrollments in schools and of all places in colleges and universities. However, despite a common impression that history is irrelevant and unrelated, the people of a nation seem to seek succor and wisdom from historians. I see, therefore, long-term significance and implications for historical essay contests. They must, however, have themes and topics that capture the student’s mind and imagination. They must also have judges who are prominent and wise, and the winning essays must receive prizes that are not only substantial but lasting.

My conclusion is that just as it is important for the secondary school student to study biology, and just as it is valuable for the student to learn how to solve differential equations, it is wise also for that young person to reflect on the wisdom of the past. History essay contests make such a scholar aware of the struggles and sacrifices of the past and the traditions that have shaped our institutions and our lives. Although I have argued mainly the case for high school students, I see that historical essays also have an important role in the university and in the upper forms of secondary school. The United States is a country with an unusual sense of historical consciousness, and the historical sense flourishes in this nation.