In school, I was never interested in history. Actually, I was rarely engrossed in any type of class that didn’t involve figuring things out. History class was all about events with dates to be memorized – not something to be figured out.
In college, studying engineering, I found myself needing to take a history class. I picked out one that sounded at least partially engaging- Colonial American History. I got lucky in that class. We had one of those temporary visiting teachers from another country. The country was the United Kingdom, and the teacher told us on the first day of class that he was going to teach the lesson as if he was in England. And in England, the period of American Colonialism was not “American History”; it was “English History” because, until after the American Revolution, there was no such thing as a country called “The United States of America.” Instead of memorizing dates, he kept us focused on why the people of that time did what they did. And when you focus on the people and puzzle out why they did what they did, history becomes much more enjoyable.
Why History?
