[Potironette]

Originally Posted by Coda

"Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it."

I used to hate that quote because it felt like all the world was repeating history anyway, or learning history to repeat it more successfully (people care about Native Americans to an extent, but mostly they're still pretty much ignored..?). Or just cruising along history to continue it (propaganda cropped up in the past in the elections between Adams and Johnson, along with badmouthing each other. Isn't that what we do today? I'm admitted not up with the times though). And I'm not sure how that applies to me since I dunno how I relate to history--what is there to repeat? Yesterday I saw it so many times I began to wonder if I was interpreting that quote differently than how people were saying it (every time I have a history test I can't help but type into google why I'm studying history =_=).

But when you look at what was happening in the 1850s, you can start to piece together a bigger picture that tells you a lot more about why things are the way they are today, in a way that "the Civil War was fought over slavery" doesn't. (Not least because it wasn't; the emphasis on slavery was in fact a political maneuver to deny foreign aid to the South.)

Ohh, that's a good way to look at dates. I generally detest studying about dates because they feel like no more than numbers.

The biggest problem with high school US history classes is that they're by and large not being taught that way.

Well, to be perfectly honest, my US history teacher is pretty good about saying that chronology is what matters, and fact is what backs up big trends...but the tests get to me because of questions like: "By February 1861, what groups of states had seceded from the union?" (A question from a previous test because I forgot the date one from the test I just took, which asked about a labor union that was important in some span of dates).
Although, the knowledge of current events is something that I also have a problem being interested in. Logically, it makes sense to know what's going on, because well, it's the world I'm living in. But..there's so much and yet so little? What do people read anyway?
Clearly, I didn't need to synthesize information to connect it to the present, though it was interesting when I learned that labor unions existed today..because I didn't know they existed at all, and I guess history did teach me about that, but studying for a test is still a different matter.


..I guess mostly it's just testing that makes me want to slam my head into a wall. And throughout class I'm pretty haunted by the knowledge that another multiple choice exam is headed my way. Regurgitating information for other subjects is actually kind of fine for me, because it doesn't feel like regurgitating information--since it all makes sense. On the other hand, history seems to have a different kind of sense that I'm not quite getting.