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History and Music
Jun. 21st, 2011 01:38 pmOver the weekend I was talking to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jeff_duntemann at Duckon, and he said that he didn't like history until he was well out of school. Now, as an adult, he studies the subject. This led me to make two observations, which I'll share with you.
The Football School of History
In the US, we have a problem with what I'll call the "football school of history." Basically, the high school football coach teaches the history classes, even though he's not much of a historian. This leads to two problems. First, history (at least US history) tends to get taught in a simplistic (if not jingoistic) "Go USA!" mode. Now, don't get me wrong - I really love America and think we are the greatest country in the world, but we're nowhere near perfect. Second, the classroom study is largely of the "memorize these dates and names" mode, which is the driest mode possible.
History as Music
When one starts to learn to play music, one spends a lot of time playing scales. Playing scales is only marginally more exciting than watching paint dry. But if you're going to play an actual song, being able to play scales is required.
Football as Scales, Or The Big Finale
Students of history do spend some time studying "when," and a surprising amount of time studying "did it really go down that way?" but the focus of historical study is why it happened the way it did. So, I would submit that knowing the list of dates and names is to history as knowing your scales is to music - you can't go on without mastering that.
Where we (at least in the US) fail is that we never show why the dry stuff in history is important. We could - giving students a couple of different articles looking at the same event would do that - but we generally don't. It didn't happen for me until I took college history, and I was shocked to discover that history wasn't all cut-and-dried.
History as Science Fiction, or A Bonus Thought
Another thought Jeff put in my head was that "storytellers need history, because stories are history and history is stories." Understanding what people did in the past and why helps you predict what they would do in the future. It also gives you a wealth of stories, free for the re-telling.
jeff_duntemann at Duckon, and he said that he didn't like history until he was well out of school. Now, as an adult, he studies the subject. This led me to make two observations, which I'll share with you.The Football School of History
In the US, we have a problem with what I'll call the "football school of history." Basically, the high school football coach teaches the history classes, even though he's not much of a historian. This leads to two problems. First, history (at least US history) tends to get taught in a simplistic (if not jingoistic) "Go USA!" mode. Now, don't get me wrong - I really love America and think we are the greatest country in the world, but we're nowhere near perfect. Second, the classroom study is largely of the "memorize these dates and names" mode, which is the driest mode possible.
History as Music
When one starts to learn to play music, one spends a lot of time playing scales. Playing scales is only marginally more exciting than watching paint dry. But if you're going to play an actual song, being able to play scales is required.
Football as Scales, Or The Big Finale
Students of history do spend some time studying "when," and a surprising amount of time studying "did it really go down that way?" but the focus of historical study is why it happened the way it did. So, I would submit that knowing the list of dates and names is to history as knowing your scales is to music - you can't go on without mastering that.
Where we (at least in the US) fail is that we never show why the dry stuff in history is important. We could - giving students a couple of different articles looking at the same event would do that - but we generally don't. It didn't happen for me until I took college history, and I was shocked to discover that history wasn't all cut-and-dried.
History as Science Fiction, or A Bonus Thought
Another thought Jeff put in my head was that "storytellers need history, because stories are history and history is stories." Understanding what people did in the past and why helps you predict what they would do in the future. It also gives you a wealth of stories, free for the re-telling.
