Personally, I have tended to enjoy the history classes I took, but I also felt that actual history “classes” are not the most efficient way to learn broader lessons/concepts. For example, I took a Russian revolutionary (~1860–1921) history class, which I personally found interesting (especially since I was also studying Russian language). I feel like I learned quite a few interesting stories, and even learned some broader concepts about failure modes for democratic governance (e.g., division among more-moderate parties vs. cohesion among some of the more-militant parties), political power structures, foreign manipulation of domestic politics, etc. However, the class also required learning/memorizing a serious amount of dates, names, places, etc. for tests, despite not actually being pivotal to learning the broader concepts.
I certainly haven’t thought all that long about it, but I do feel like history could be taught much more efficiently for people like me who want to learn important lessons from history to update their models and/or get a sense of what might happen moving forward. For example, integrating short-ish (e.g., 3 week) history modules that don’t focus so much on the specific details into political science classes on specific themes like “political revolutions” or “social conceptions of morality”?
Of course, if you like learning all the details and/or telling the stories in conversations, then the traditional format seems like a good route.
Classes are often not the most efficient way to learn things. History is certainly no different, and I think the idea of history modules sounds very interesting. That being said, I wrote this post mainly for undergrads who have to operate within the boundaries of classes to some extent.
Personally, I have tended to enjoy the history classes I took, but I also felt that actual history “classes” are not the most efficient way to learn broader lessons/concepts. For example, I took a Russian revolutionary (~1860–1921) history class, which I personally found interesting (especially since I was also studying Russian language). I feel like I learned quite a few interesting stories, and even learned some broader concepts about failure modes for democratic governance (e.g., division among more-moderate parties vs. cohesion among some of the more-militant parties), political power structures, foreign manipulation of domestic politics, etc. However, the class also required learning/memorizing a serious amount of dates, names, places, etc. for tests, despite not actually being pivotal to learning the broader concepts.
I certainly haven’t thought all that long about it, but I do feel like history could be taught much more efficiently for people like me who want to learn important lessons from history to update their models and/or get a sense of what might happen moving forward. For example, integrating short-ish (e.g., 3 week) history modules that don’t focus so much on the specific details into political science classes on specific themes like “political revolutions” or “social conceptions of morality”? Of course, if you like learning all the details and/or telling the stories in conversations, then the traditional format seems like a good route.
Classes are often not the most efficient way to learn things. History is certainly no different, and I think the idea of history modules sounds very interesting. That being said, I wrote this post mainly for undergrads who have to operate within the boundaries of classes to some extent.