Why Most People Think Memorizing Historical Facts is Useless (and Why It Is) | Hacker News Reader

Why Most People Think Memorizing Historical Facts is Useless (and Why It Is)

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27 pointsjcnnghm16 comments

Imagine you've just arrived at a new town and you're chilling at a coffee shop and you get into a conversation with a local. "Tell me about this place" you ask them.

"Well, Lexington is 3 blocks away from Jones St, the bakery is located on 875 Jackson Heights Rd and you can't park on Woodrow St between the hours of 8 & 6 PM."

This makes about as making high school students memorize dates & places. Historical facts provide context to the broad sweet of history. They help you navigate through the historical space. But they're close to useless if you don't have an understanding of the historical space to begin with.

Now, imagine you've been in town for a few years, you're starting to understand how everything is oriented around the hill, what the major thoroughfares are, the general nature of different suburbs. You're starting to get a feel for how the city operates. Now it's helpful to know if someone lives on Lexington St, you can just go down Jones and turn right at the light, that it's ok to drive to meet someone at a bar on Woodrow because the streets are free parking after 6pm and that the bakery is 3 blocks south of where you're meeting your friend because she's at 511 Jackson Heights Road. What were previously useless pieces of trivia are now what make you "street smart" around the place. They're what help you navigate around the city by feel rather than directions.

Of course, you're never going to be a professional taxi driver so it would be pointless to memorize all the streets and how they are laid out. But, at the same time, you understand how owning a GPS and relying on that exclusively is missing out on some vital part of what it is to live in this city.

So many people I meet pooh pooh history because they don't understand this analogy. They're bumbling around without a mental map and they don't even know it.

The history classes I had (post, let's say, eighth grade; I’m from Germany) were all about the “why”. The credo was not to even bother remembering historical facts unless they help you explain why something happened. I always hated remembering facts. But I always really loved history. It wasn’t about facts, it was about explaining why something happened (with the facts as your tool) and finding out whether some explanations are better or more plausible than others.

Remembering just facts is no fun if you can’t use them for anything.

(The “whys” of history are more than cute little stories about individuals as this article makes it sound, though. Explanations can include economic data, statistics, maps, laws, newspaper articles, cartoons and all kinds of documents.)

PS, history as taught in the United States can’t be that bad. I just finished listening to a lecture about Germany prior to the First World War by Margaret Anderson (Department of History UC Berkeley – http://history.berkeley.edu/faculty/Anderson/ – the lecture is available as a podcast – oh, the joys of the internet) and it pretty much echoed exactly all the things we discussed in the last two years in school. It was pretty nostalgic all around.

You're bringing up a world-class institution of higher learning, whereas the article is talking about average, run-of-the-mill education. History taught at the upper-college levels can be pretty good. History taught in public high schools, not so much. There are some good teachers out there, so YMMV, but history, as well as math, have a habit of being short-changed by memorization-focused learning and testing. Not even because it's easy to teach, but because it's easy to grade.

Bad teachers can turn interesting explanations into boring lists of facts.

And your schools can't be that far behind universities when it comes to teaching quality, can they? Considering that teaching quality (contrary to depth and detail of knowledge of those teaching and other advantages of higher education) is the one thing were at least in my experience schools are sometimes even better as universities.

What evidence does Mr. Greene provide for British connivance at Napoleon's escape from Elba, or for Talleyrand's masterminding the plot? Talleyrand was a thoroughly crooked operator, but prudent enough to see dangers in such a plan. Waterloo was anything but a walkover for the British and Prussian forces.

Heaven knows that a lot of history instruction can render the most fascinating characters boring, but some overview of Talleyrand's earlier and later career, the history of the Congress of Vienna, the campaign that led to Waterloo, etc. etc. might enable to raise such questions. Is it really a gain to escape from the world of disconnected dry facts to a world of dubious theories?

I'm going to have to disagree with the premise of this and the last post regarding history. History is fun, but not ultimately particularly useful. It's fun in that the "whys" provide narrative value to the facts of history, but as to why it isn't that useful, consider three points.

1. All history that you know is viewed through the lens of biased historians. Historians are extremely biased. All of them. Unlike the sciences where there is a reasonable control on bias (that is, experimentation and truth), in history there is no such control. The field becomes swept up in fads and memes and patterns, and looking at each one individually you would never know that it isn't just Truth. Since historians are the only ones who delve deep into the facts enough to have opinions, but there is no control on their opinions and biases, you essentially can't use any of their output for decision making today.

2. The devil is in the details. Almost always, the lines of implication and causality between two events that are connected (the "why") are extremely subject to minute details that are ultimately unknowable at this point in time. Identifying which of them are the true ones and which are only apparent is an exercise in futility, and creates a ripe environment for bias to exercise its magic (keep in mind that most humans are essentially rationalization engines, and are essentially blind to contrary evidence when faced with ambiguous data sets). The devil being in the details also means that any given scenario that you are faced with will differ very, very significantly from any prior scenario in thousands of details. History only operates at the level of the broad stroke, the gross events that have a literally incomprehensible number of details that could be important or not.

3. Lots of things happen due to chance. More things than people are willing to admit. Humans are wired to seek out patterns. Often this means humans find spurious patterns. Basing your decisions on things which are unknowably determined by random events is dumb.

I doubt if this will convince many of you, based on the responses these posts have generated, but at least keep in mind that your time is valuable, and learning the details of history may just not make your life one iota better.

You are definitely right about the bias, although I don't think that proves uselessness. You may be right in saying that history is not particularly useful (although I disagree), but I think you go too far in dismissing learning the details of history as not making your life "one iota" better.

Many fascinating events have taken place, and reading about them, even biased accounts, is wonderful and inspiring and most definitely makes my life better.

I was even prompted by your post to look up the etymology of the word iota. My life is better now, by more than an iota. My time is certainly valuable, as you say, but I am happy with what it just purchased.

48 Laws of Power was pretty dumb, unfortunately. It celebrated con artists and manipulators as the powerful. As I recall from having read it 10 years ago, it strongly suggested Napolean's advisors were the powerful, whereas its dearth of stories about Napolean's actions themselves suggested by comparison that he was not. Instead of discussing true, active, forthright power, it pretended passive aggressiveness was the epitome of power.

And how is that different from today? Who is more powerful: the president or lobby groups?

What evidence do you have to suggest that is not the case?

I read this post and the post that it was critiquing and both came to the same conclusion: Knowing the who/what/when/where throughout history is only useful when understanding the Why as well.

The two authors have completely different views about the purpose and nature of history.

Justin Cunningham, the author who doesn't think that memorizing historical facts is important, has the view that history is just a collection of disconnected, but interesting stories. He refuses to memorize anything that doesn't pique his interest.

Scott Powell, the author who does think it is necessary to memorize history, has a much different perspective. He thinks that the purpose of history is to "use the past as a resource for living in the present." In order to do that, he thinks that it is necessary to memorize all relevant historical facts -- even the ones that don't have fun interesting stories. Memorizing what happened and in what order is the only way one can fully integrate the historical context into ones understanding.

Here is a link to Scott Powell's article for comparison: http://www.historyatourhouse.com/?p=154

Scott's argument is weak, though. He tries to pivot around 1620 as a "fact" about the date of Plymouth landing, but all his reasons for why the date is interesting are more interesting than the date itself. The fact that the Pilgrims were fleeing persecution, that the Jamestown colony was underway etc. and had views on the Pilgrims are relevant and interesting facts around the story about how the Pligrims were ironically not tolerant themselves. But the date of 1620 is not an important part of that story - in fact it's irrelevant.

In my own opinion, the dichotomy is not so clear-cut. Historical stories are interesting if they are relevant in some way, because we relate to the cultures, ideas or personalities involved. I don't see that there's a big difference between Justin's interesting stories, and Scott's stories as resources; interesting stories are resources for the present. If nothing else, you can entertain with them!

It's not that I refuse to memorize things, it's that things don't just happen. Everything happens for a reason. The reason behind things is usually very interesting, whereas what actually happens isn't necessarily interesting. Although I will say that memorization without understanding is useless.

huh? To be able to use history as a resource for living in the present you need to know and understand the what, why, and consequences of actions/choices. Knowing that starting a land war with Russia in fall/winter time is fraught with peril is a lesson. One I can apply to my decision making. Knowing that France/Napoleon in whenever? and Germany/Hitler in 1943? both got there asses handed to them by Russia is trivia and not a useful resource for living in the present.

What happened and what order != memorizing names,dates, and facts.

I am confused by this assertion. I always thought the Who/What/When/Where were more useful, in general, than the Why. Why is tagged with bias; you are receiving somebody's perspective and interpretation of an event, especially as you look further from the source. Who/What/When/Where gives you the facts.

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