Hello Cypress,
Somewhere along the way, high school history instruction became an exercise in rote memorizing of dates and names and the famous political deeds of kings, queens, emperors, and generals.
The ancient Greeks, especially during and after Herodotus, considered the study of history to be a form of moral instruction.
Modern university level historical instruction by talented professors makes history more of a humanistic story and imbued with the rich tapestry of political history, cultural history, economic history, history of science, and intellectual history.
A good teacher makes all the difference.
I had a physics professor that was awesome. It was like going to a show. He was so creative in his demonstrations!
Concurrently, my chemistry professor was terrible, the worst. Rattled on and on faster than I could comprehend, acted annoyed when asked a question, and worst of all, gave a test at the end of each class on what had been discussed that day. Then, at the next class after the test, that was when he would go over the material and show how each problem was worked. First you get tested on it, then you are shown how to work the problems!
Naturally, I learned way more physics than chemistry.
Later, I found out chemistry was a weeder course for pre-med. The trick was: you had to be part of a study group and put in extra time before each lecture to 'advance-learn' the material on your own time. The pre-med students were usually part of a fraternity that was 'on the inside,' and had advance group knowledge of what was faced, set up their own 'classes' on how to take the weeder course.
Silly me. I thought you go to class to learn, receive an assignment, do the work, learn how to work the problems, get taught, and THEN get tested on it.
Oh, you definitely wanted to learn the material after your tests, regardless of how well you did. You'd see it again on the final. But the tests were part of your grade, so knowing it by the end of the course did not get you a good grade.
Schools should be set up to first teach, then test. That's what people are paying for and expecting.
That stuff was hard enough with making it even more difficult to learn.
