
Why Most People Think Memorizing Historical Facts is Useless (and Why It Isn’t) - dwwoelfel
http://www.historyatourhouse.com/?p=154
======
johnswamps
The article's argument seems to be semantical in nature. I don't think many
people would argue that learning about history is useless. The author and I
hold the exact same beliefs -- knowing that the Pilgrims landed in American in
1690 is useless, but knowing why they left, the rough state of colonization in
America at the time, etc. is useful. But when people refer to "historical
facts", they think of the former. It seems like he's just quibbling over the
word "fact".

I would make a similar argument for geography. I don't really care where a
particular country is and what borders it, unless it's in a broader context.
Everyone should know that France borders Germany, if only because of WW2, or
that India borders Pakistan. But I couldn't care less where Uganda is until
something happens where its location is important. Then it stops being a fact
and becomes important in context, so I'll look it up if I need to.

~~~
rfghjhbg
Knowing that it was half a century after the reformation but before the
English civil war, yet after the establishment of other colonies is important.
Knowing that it was 1620 rather than 1619/1621 isn't important - but that's
all you are tested on. Treating it as maths where being 1year out is
completely wrong is stupid.

~~~
Confusion
There's two problems with this approach:

1) A practical one: suppose you would be lenient on a test and allowed the
students to be 5 years off. How much would that change? How many students are
actually only a few years off? Is 5 years reasonable or should they be allowed
to be 7 years off? What about the situation where a set of events are closer
in time than your deviation?

2) One from generalization: if you have to know it was half a century after
the reformation, you still know nothing if you don't know the reformation
started in 1540 (I'm making this year up; it depends much on the country).
Which still doesn't mean a thing if you don't know Michaelangelo died in 1480
(still making stuff up), which is 400 years after the Dark Ages started (...).
Do you think they should know whether Raphael and Thomas of Aquinas lived in
the same times? Should they know whether the Austrian-Hungarian empire existed
already when Newton invented gravitation? The more facts you start relating,
the more important precision becomes. The more you want to describe detailed
chains of events, in which the details matter, the more facts you need to
relate.

~~~
flogic
That's what happens if you teach the facts devoid of the relations. The
history classes where they taught relations I got something out of. The others
are just useless footnotes in my education.

~~~
rfghjhbg
There's a great parody of this kind of teaching by Mark Steele (UK
Broadcaster).

Teacher> What did the Vikings come in?

Student>Ships miss?

Teacher>Wrong

Student>Long boats?

Teacher>No they came in hoards, that's what it says in the book

------
grellas
History helps shape our worldview and that in turn shapes our very thinking -
how we see what is or is not important to our immediate society and to world
developments.

The one thing I learned from my former life as a history major (wanting
eventually to be a history professor) in my undergraduate days was the
absolute primacy of original sources. We all make our mark as we go and we
want to write about it. We know and understand the oral traditions of our own
generation but what gets passed down from one generation to another is that
which is put into writing (or that is otherwise preserved in some lasting
form). And that is what is fascinating about history: seeing what the men and
women living in a particular time and place had to say about what they were
doing and why there were doing it. Such writings bring to life the world in
which they found themselves - its problems and challenges, its hopes and
fears, its expectations for the betterment of the society in which they lived.
Thus, it is _contemporaneous_ writings and chronologies, not necessarily
written self-consciously as history, that make for a fascinating view of the
human condition in any given age. And this in turn inspires or depresses, as
the case may be, but inevitably offers lessons on how the world might be
profitably viewed and shaped to those who are attuned to learning from those
who have preceded them in facing life's challenges.

The more common approach to how history is taught is to wade through survey
books done by academics who have tried to sum up ages long gone by while
sitting in their remote seats of learning. This can work, depending on the
imaginative strength of the historian, but it is inherently inferior (in my
view) to a study of history based of immersing oneself in original materials
from the era itself. The survey emphasizes "facts" as ends in themselves; the
absorption of original materials, in contrast, gives one the sense of a living
drama of life, where the "facts" are indeed important but only as woven into
the desires and yearnings of the generation that lived out its challenges and
then sat down to write about them.

History can be invaluable to our learning but, unless it is well taught, we
can so easily miss its significance. The author of this piece emphasizes this
point and is correct in it. But the "original source" idea adds an important
dimension that is missing from his analysis, though it is, in my view, perhaps
the most important piece of all.

~~~
petewarden
I've become very hooked on contemporary sources, especially diaries. Roth's
account of the great depression is illuminating because there's no hindsight
or sweeping narrative, just one damn thing after another. His attempts at
explanations and predictions are frequently contradicted by events, as opposed
to later historians who have the luxury of drawing a bullseye around the final
results.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d.html/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/185-...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d.html/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/185-2207453-2622137?a=158648799X)

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jcnnghm
The important thing in history isn't the who, the where, or the when, it's the
what and in particular, the why. History classes almost never cover that, most
important, part. Instead it's an exercise in rout memorization. If you focus
on the why, everything else falls into place because it actually has meaning.
If it doesn't have meaning, it's just a number that needs to be remembered for
a few hours to be regurgitated on a piece of paper for a grade.

~~~
philwelch
Why do you think that is? Do you realize _how much pressure_ a textbook writer
or school district would face for teaching, in so many words, that the
Pilgrims tried setting up a theocracy, and the problems inherent in that led
the Founding Fathers to build a secular government? How _dare_ the schools
suggest such a thing! Next they'll try and teach kids that evolution is true.

~~~
InclinedPlane
The reason is the same as in math, physics, chemistry, English. It's more
important to _cover_ a larger amount of material than it is to actually have
students _learn_ useful knowledge in a subject. There are lots of high school
students who could tell you the dates of Napoleon's reign, the dates of Otto
von Bismark's reign, the dates of WWI, WWII, and the cold war, but only a tiny
fraction of those students could explain with clarity and insight how those
disparate events are related and linked. Yet it's that knowledge, more than X
significant event happened during year Y at location Z, which makes knowledge
of history valuable.

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JacobAldridge
The two best books I've read, which provide the broad historical narrative
more so than dates and trivia - Peter Watson's _A History from Fire to Freud_
\- [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ideas-history-Freud-Peter-
Watson/dp/...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ideas-history-Freud-Peter-
Watson/dp/029760726X) and John Keegan's _A History of Warfare_ \-
[http://www.amazon.com/History-Warfare-John-
Keegan/dp/0679730...](http://www.amazon.com/History-Warfare-John-
Keegan/dp/0679730826)

I don't think either is necessarily _the_ best on the subject, they're just
two I've found and found much value from. In addition to allowing me to
provide historical stories to make relevant business observations, they (and a
History major I suppose) allowed me to write my favourite ever HN comment -
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=812221>

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notjeffgoldblum
I, for one, could not agree with this article more. I was one of the kids who
viewed the study of history as I knew it as completely superfluous to my life
goals and have only recently (at the age of 22) started to appreciate the
value of historical study as described by the author of this post.

I was almost proud to declare my contempt for the subject all the way through
my high school years.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I enjoyed some history at high school but not history lessons in general they
never really engaged me. But then I'm wondering if this is like someone saying
"I enjoy blowing things up but chemistry lessons never really engaged me".

Basically are the type of historical facts, Plymouth harbour or whatever, that
are taught in high school instead the basis on which to build later historical
_understanding_. An 11 year old won't normally be able to combine the relevant
facets of the events in James I court with the leaving of the Pilgrims, the
situation in Europe and the differences in the main North American colonies to
create wisdom. What they can do is learn facts about these situations to use
later as the basis for such more complex understanding.

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jgershen
I definitely agree with the argument that historical perspective is important
- but I think the author's pessimistic assessment of the American public
school system, and its approach, is inaccurate.

For example, he references a poll by Strategic Vision LLC that purports to
show the ignorance of students in Oklahoma - the poll in question was pretty
thoroughly debunked here, three weeks before the blog post was published:

[http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/11/real-oklahoma-
student...](http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/11/real-oklahoma-students-ace-
citizenship.html)

------
greenlblue
The same critique applies to all the disciplines that are currently taught at
the undergraduate level in all universities and the part about smart students
becoming cynical especially rings true.

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dwwoelfel
Scott Powell, the guy who wrote this article, recorded a set of lectures
covering the history of Western Civilization. They're available for purchase
on his website here: <http://www.powellhistory.com/1hfa.html>. I'm too poor to
purchase them, so I can't give a first-hand account, but I've heard good
things.

Teller, from Penn & Teller, had good things to say:
<http://www.powellhistory.com/teller/>

