The Difference Between Studying History and Knowing Historical Trivia

I was in high school in the early 1980s. History was an afterthought even then. My history teacher was mainly the soccer coach. I am sure he had a degree in something, but I am not sure it was history. That has always seemed to be the running theme: the history teacher didn’t need to know history. The problem wasn’t that he didn’t care. The problem was that the school handed the subject to whoever had an open period, and that decision says everything about what they thought the subject was worth. We got the American Revolution (dates and events), the Civil War (dates, events, and mostly slavery), and some of the Industrial Revolution (dates and facts again). All of my children went through basically the same thing. It was not a history education. It was “remember these facts for the test.” Besides being bored, the only real result of my high school history education is this. If I had paid attention beyond making sure I could pass, it still would only have prepared me to be very good…