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One of the biggest issues with my school’s teaching of history is that it failed to communicate how much of history is just cause and effect, contexts and forces, humans and ideas.
My school focused a lot on when and what happened. A lot of human nature and why things happened the way it did is what makes it interesting, but that part was usually very brief.
I really appreciate now that my schools mostly tried to teach things in order. A caused B caused C, etc.
Unfortunately I moved countries a few times, so instead I got 1914 to “now” three times, and basically nothing between the middle ages and the 20th century.
Me reading history on c/historymemes.
Fuck that is perfect
for me it was a combination of the hour long lectures and then reading something that lacks creative prose. textbooks felt more like a chore than something I could enjoy reading, and then I’d zone out for an hour and learn absolutely nothing.
the only time I was genuinely interested in history during school was learning about the rennaisance period in middle school. I fucking loved runescape at the time so I had a reason to really get into the lessons. probably the only history exam I got 100% on. the second closest time was the very beginning of world history in high school, cause I was fascinated in how humans lived before civilizations started forming. that ‘section’ was a good 15 minutes of the first class of the year and then we skipped ahead (:
Now that I’m out of school I try to learn about history whenever I can because I know how important it is, I just wish I had a better experience with it in school. Lectures are evil I wish they weren’t my only option back then.
Amen to everything in that comment.
Learning history after learning nothing but STEM and then working in the MIC until your late 20s
We only learn things that have practical function in our life. If ‘history’ is a distorted propaganda field, we will naturally find no importance in the lessons being taught, no matter if they technically happened or not, if it is not a statistically valid representation of what will happen in the future. After all, you cannot change the past, so the only purpose of history is how it helps the future.
Choice in topic makes all the difference!
I absolutely get why they needed to whip us through some 10,000 years of human history, so we had at least a broad idea of where human society came from, but goddamn is it a slog and a morale killer.
Especially when classes poorly co-ordinate from one grade to the next, and each subsequent class has to spent 1/4 of its time trying to make sure you got the background information you were supposed to learn last year.
I’m glad this resonated with you. I really appreciate your history posts, they fill in a lot of gaps in my history knowledge (western school only taught western history) and expand what I already know in a fun way.
Thinking back, I never liked history because I never had any memory for numbers/dates, and exams were all about that.
I think it’s not really about the exams, but about how history was taught. The subject matter is inherently interesting. These are the most interesting true stories that we have, and rather than being taught in an interesting way, with context and drama, they’re mostly presented as a list of dry facts.
“Here’s a list of facts. Let’s test your rote memory. This is how we teach history. Try not to accidentally learn anything fun or useful.”
Worst kind of history teaching. My mother said that was how they taught history in school when she was young, and I’m sure there are backward-ass school curriculums today still doing that. That probably would’ve killed my youthful enthusiasm for history. Luckily, my state’s public schools gave a very modern, engaging form of history.
It’s honestly contrary to the core idea of History as a discipline - a chronicle or a timeline isn’t History. History is about making sense of the past.
The best history teachers I ever encountered were storytellers more than anything. Names and dates are meaningless if you can’t connect them with personalities, motivations, and all the social/political/ideological baggage that make humans do human things.
BTW, to echo something another user said to you a few days ago: thanks for recommending Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. It’s my bedtime reading right now and I’m loving it.
The best history teachers I ever encountered were storytellers more than anything. Names and dates are meaningless if you can’t connect them with personalities, motivations, and all the social/political/ideological baggage that make humans do human things.
I’m still not great with dates, honestly, and I went to college for this shit. XD
BTW, to echo something another user said to you a few days ago: thanks for recommending Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. It’s my bedtime reading right now and I’m loving it.
It’s awesome to hear that I managed to get the word out a little! I’m glad you’re enjoying it!
I forget most countries’ history lessons look like this. In the UK it was mostly analysing pictures and writing essays. So. many. essays.
I like knowing stuff. Knowing stuff is great!
What I don’t like is having to learn stuff.
