History lessons

My 14 year old son complained that his history lessons at school consist of memorization and that he is not able to use his intellect as he does in subjects like mathematics and science. I told him that if he just focuses on regurgitating what he has been fed, that would indeed be very boring. He can make it interesting by asking “why” and turn memorization into reasoning. Examples:

• Who started the Age of Exploration? Portugal and Spain. Why?
• Where did the Industrial Revolution begin? Great Britain. Why?

Asking questions about the subject also helps you memorize it better, since you spend more time engaging with the material and make more connections.

One of the main goals of school history lessons is to make you proud of your country's past and teach you who to regard as friends and enemies, rather than giving you an objective account of what actually happened. This is achieved at the cost of oversimplifying the storyline and ignoring inconvenient facts. You might feel proud in the short term, but as your intellect develops, you may realize that you were not told the whole truth and feel a sense of betrayal.

The simplest antidote is to copy the official narrative into an AI and ask it to criticize it. Ask it to check the important claims against primary sources and historians with different perspectives. If you want to go further, here are some excellent books:

• Guns, Germs, and Steel
• History Lessons: How Textbooks Around The World Portray U.S. History
• The Fall of the Ottomans
• How The World Works

Music: Prince - The Most Beautiful Girl In the World