Your history classes sound a lot more useful than the ones I sat through in the US - ours was mostly delivered as a set of settled fact.
So one year you'd learn about the Roman empire's withdrawal from Britain, the next it was the Russian revolution, the year after it was the Wars of the Roses or whatever.
Exam questions were always always always in the form of "The Roman withdrawal from Britain was inevitable. Discuss" or "The Industrial revolution led to the fall of the British Empire. Discuss". I.e. long-form essay answers, perhaps 2 or 3 essays within a single 2 or 3 hour exam. You never had to just recall naked facts on their own - you needed to know some to answer the essays of course, but you never just recited.
So pros and cons - I have no idea about what order the Prime Ministers were in or Kings and Queens or if the Edwardian Era came before or after the victorian era etc. I lack historic knowledge, but I guess the skills learnt were useful?
I have no idea what it is like now - my experience is a couple of decades out of date.
edit: looks like things are more or less the same still. Example paper with questions specifically asking you to critique historic sources (page 3): https://cdn.savemyexams.co.uk/uploads/2023/01/1hia-11-que-20.... Moar: https://www.savemyexams.co.uk/gcse/history/edexcel/-/pages/p...
I completely support this. Science prior to college was basically a waste. History was full of bias and axes to grind.
Don't get me wrong, teach these subjects, the scientific method is great. However, the value is low compared to the tools given in Math and English.
Like, I’m very happy that I got to learn probability theory, but all the differential equations that broke my mind seem entirely pointless now.
And than natural sciences in general (climate, space) also have applications there.
Subjects that feel useful post graduation, if they are being taught in high school early college the time gap makes it less useful. HS and early college classes fundamentals are needed for the specialized curriculum that needed for higher college and post graduate education.
My public school biology class involved sequencing and editing DNA to make bacteria change color.
I would not call it a waste.
In fact I wish I would've had more science in school, I managed to go until college until I took my first Physics class, and physics is really useful.
If you're a retired lawyer, it's likely that you're teaching just keep yourself entertained, or maybe just some supplemental income [1]. When you do things for fun, instead of out of necessity, it gives you the distinct advantage of allowing yourself to focus only on things that are actually interesting to you.
It's possible that my high school history teachers started teaching history specifically because they felt like they might have a unique take on it.
[1] I know that teachers are traditionally underpaid; however if it's just supplemental income, "underpaid" is still often better than "zero income". $36,000 a year isn't a ton of money, but if you're already largely retired, it might be the difference between "taking a trip this summer" or not.