History education is often viewed as learning about what happened in the past; however, there are reasons why this view of history education is incorrect. Firstly, learning what happened is not easy to do as there is not only one story of the past; and secondly, research suggests that history is not simply a matter of common sense. Prior to addressing these, the author discusses issues concerning the rejection of history education as straightforward such as the existence of ordinary historical concepts. He then discusses how students use everyday ideas, such as wealth and science, to construct an understanding of substantive history and how everyday ideas differ from the study of history. However, there are some ideas in history which are more powerful than others and lead to students’ understanding of progression in history. Nonetheless, there are certain caveats: developing students’ understanding of history does not imply grand claims and learning to understand a discipline does not replace the need to understand particular historical passages. The author applies the disciplinary matrix of historical studies as discussed by Jörn Rüsen through the concepts of historical consciousness and understanding, to the study of students’ understanding of history. He concludes with a discussion of the research Project Chata, which researched the use of second-order concepts of history by students.