Not boring at all

[[deleted user]]

History is boring if------- your reading is limited to high school textbooks and teachers who want you to memorize and spit out names, dates, and places! Those people only seemed like names in a book without the good parts that would have made them real.
MyraSaidIt

[Kate]

I do think it's a shame that school curricula seem designed to take all the joy out of learning. I have always enjoyed history, but not usually as taught in school. Fortunately my high school U.S. history teacher had a lot of fun dispelling myths for us - perfect for high school kids. We focused on the why and how rather than memorizing the when. Unfortunately, my daughter just suffered through an art history class in college that was nothing but memorizing dates.

[Tytti]

Personally I have never really thought that learning should be fun. It usually isn't because everyone can't be interested in every subject but people still have to study them in school and hopefully also learn something, and that requires work.

We usually covered about one chapter/topic in one class, unless it was something bigger, and then moved to the next topic in the chronological order, at least in the comprehensive school. In "high school" everyone already knew the basic facts so we were able to dig a little deeper. Memorizing dates was never considered important, in tests we usually had to give essay answers anyway. Questions in our final exam are more like this: "Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels predicted that a socialist revolution would first happen in countries like Great Britain. What made Marx and Engels claim that and why did a socialist revolution happen in Russia?" So basically knowing one year might be enough to get good points.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog]

This approach tends to worry me. Education can be fun and it can be a pain. There is and can be no guaranty and no right to assume.
Education is supposed to be work. Work by the student.
That includes bearing up in topics otherwise of no interest, or interest at that time.

The right teacher in the right classroom can result in magic. No one has a right to magic. Serendipity is lovely but at best one of many possibilities.

Whatever the other goals of learning, and there are many, one goal is to equip you with the basics of your culture. Names a dates are hardly worth much, but part of being US, whatever that means is a common core of knowledge.

[Donna]

I was so lucky to have teachers that loved what they taught (History) and (Literature). I love History and I love Reading.