Objectives

The objectives of the Competition are:

• Arising interest in young people towards history – the history of the birthplace, the region they live in, certain facts and events that have changed lifestyles;
• Provoking interest in research work. Providing the possibility that secondary school students find themselves little known facts and events which they will not only describe, but also tell the influence of these events on the fate of their birth region, on a certain person or group of people;
• In the process of research, young people acquire abilities in working with archives, museums, discovering and interviewing contemporaries;
• A second and a very important step is the restoration of events, finding relations and attitudes, critical use of sources, evaluations and interpretations often contradicting with each other. The knowledge and the ability to work with various sources and literature, conclusions and analyses making on the collected information can be transferred to and used in numerous areas;
• The National History Competition enriches and renews the methods of teaching History;
• The concept of the Competition is not only discovery of little known facts and events but also young people to rationalise critically, because a new understanding of the past is thus a mean for an active integration in the current world.

The Bulgarian competition is a full member of the European National History Competitions Network EUSTORY and as such aims to:

• Encourage generation of new visions for history – disclosing and discussing national myths, stereotypes and prejudice;
• Stimulate tolerance and cross-cultural consciousness among young Europeans – using history as focus for cross-cultural understanding;
• Strengthen cross-border dialog in Europe;
• Initiate discussions about historical culture and identity – not aiming at a standardised European canon but at an increased awareness of the existing diversity in Europe.