History is a subject in school which I have a love-hate relationship with.
On one hand, you find that most people, including me, enjoy learning about the people in history – the stories of lives lived and adventures…adventured? Whenever I re ad about famous people in History I want to know more details about them. What was their childhood like? What dreams did they have?
The problem with history in school is that it is not presented in a personal manor. History in school is facts. Hitler was bad. Fact. Columbus discovered America. Fact. The battle was fought in 1450. Fact.
This way of viewing the world seems to me to be dry and dull. Boring and tasteless. Very few people enjoy learning facts. (Not I said enjoy, not are good at) History, in short, has false advertising. Histroy if accuretly presented is not boring or dull.
Just look at the word: his story - history is the study of mankind.
Mankind is not as simple as facts. People are not facts. You rarely can use absolutes with people. If you say about me:
Alison loves to write
it is true in a general sense. Most often, I enjoy writing but there are specific times when I dislike it. I become exasperated by it and even just writing a sentence makes me work. I can, and do, become irrational and unpredictable. Every human becomes irrational. When we say something like.
Napoleon was a brilliant strategist, we confine our minds and ideas. Was Napoleon always a brilliant strategist? Was it something that he worked all his youth to perfect?
I wish history captured that better.
Of course, there is a genre created (historical fiction) meant to capture the “what ifs?” of history. However, I have my own qualms about this. Most historical fiction I’ve read either dabbles to little in real history and fills in the rest with incredibly speculative fiction (I don’t have any particular books titles to share for an example because I discarded those books) or a book remains so true to history (naming battles, numbers, etc) that it turns back into simple dry facts and is hard to enjoy (Personally I feel that G. H. Henty writes like that.)
I hope that someday they find a balance for History. I think that if treated properly, history is a subject that appeals to all types of students.
