History - is it just me who hates the subject?

MiniMoon

I love history too. It was always one of my favourite subjects at school.
I am 43% of my way through that diary of Samuel Pepys, just into January 1665. I learned about the great comet from this book, I'd never heard about it anywhere else.

As a result of your post I have just ordered a copy of Pepys' diary. I haven't read it and always meant to, so thanks for prompting me to do it.

I remember when I was young if my parents were driving us down to the west country, we'd pass Stonehenge and spend some time there. In those days visitors could get up close and walk within the structure it always had a massive wow effect still does. Just how did they got those stones there? One of life's imponderables!

I read that biography about Samuel Pepys MiniMoon, I loved it a great insight into London during that era.

I think the most important aspect of history is that it gives us an understanding of the present and how we arrived where we have particularly in relation to conflict around the world and how that has been shaped by the past.

Having said it was my favourite subject at school, in retrospect my school taught history from a strong Catholic bias which made me look for more balance as I got older. I think I got my love of history from home, my parents had a lot of history books. I must have absorbed some of what was contained within, I think I always had a clear vision of a timeline from an early age. My grandchildren struggle with chronological order sometimes.

Social history, biography, women's history, political history, economic history, diplomatic history, art history, food history, history of science and medicine, cultural history, women’s history, intellectual history, environmental history, landscape history.

How in all your years have you been completely oblivious to all the other history books aand research that surround you?

Walk into a library or good bookshop, walk to the history section and see the huge range of history books there. Go and look at every other book filing subject in the whole library or bookshop and it will contain histories of that subject.

Just open your eyes and look!

I love it- so much so I used to teach it at one stage and I now run a small genealogy group. Mind you, we don’t seem to learn from it and keep reinventing solutions and starting and/or contributing to wars. You are so very lucky in the UK with all those old fantastic buildings and castles. Westminster Abbey- what an absolute treasure !

Thanks Doodledog you've put it very well. I completely agree.

I enjoyed History at school and still do. Like most on this thread, I am more interested in the social side of it, and don’t like the approach that reduces it to ‘facts’. It’s not possible to tell a human story using only ‘facts’, as the human side is very subjective and it would be reduced to lists, which would be very boring. We have to imagine how people might have felt, and make assumptions about why those feelings made them act as they did.

It is that imagination that makes history so fascinating. Why did Elizabeth 1st refuse to marry? What was the purpose of Stonehenge? How did it feel to be a soldier in the trenches of The Somme, or his mother, wife or sister waiting at home? Or a revolutionary in France who was so desperate that he risked everything to overthrow the regime that kept him in poverty? Why did people here not revolt, when their living conditions were no better? What made people vote for Hitler? Or campaign for social change to improve the lives of working people?

To answer questions like that we have to think about what it is to be human, and to wonder how we would have reacted in circumstances we can only imagine. Only then can we weave together the threads of what is sometimes a patchy tale, and come up with a credible version based on a combination of ‘facts’ (ie dates and times) and sociological information (eg life expectancy, birth rates, employment patterns etc) mixed with an understanding of people’s wants and needs.

Different historians come up with different interpretations, all of which may be true - did Anne Boleyn love Henry V111 or was she a scheming social climber? Did he love her, or just want a son? Was he acting as a cruel ruthless man, or a king who knew his country would be riven by wars if he left it without an heir? We don’t know, but it’s interesting to put the possibilities together and construct a believable narrative.

History is not all about killing - it is about politics, invention, religion, discovery and more, too. It’s one of the few subjects I enjoyed at school, despite sometimes dreadful teaching.

I too love history.

In secondary school we did social history rather than the traditional battles and kings. We looked at the history of medicine, housing, education and prisons among other subjects.

It was this background which led me into studying the history of costume and through that I became fascinated by fine and applied art and antiques. As I now deal in antiques my school days social history set me on the path to where I now am.

I have an eclectic collection of history books in my library, but mostly on the Tudors and the Victorians. I also devour anything "historical" on TV and spend happy hours picking out the errors in costume design and etiquette in some of the series. The Tudors is full of howlers whereas Downton Abbey is very accurate.

The history that I found most fascinating at secondary school was the Great Reform Act of 1832 and all the campaigns and extensions to sufferage that followed. Also, the coming of the railways which changed the social and economic landscape and developments in medical practice.

I think this is why George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch, which has these themes as a background, is my favourite novel of all time, one which I have read and studied and still enjoy re-reading on a regular basis.

I agree there is a preponderance of war and bloody conflict in the school curriculum but there are also topics about society, the economy and culture.

The Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution are fascinating topics as is the Counterculture of the 1960s.

There simply isn't enough time in the curriculum to study anything to the depth that we come to enjoy as adults. Nor do children have the maturity to understand the events and forces which lead to conflict. It's just a broad brush approach and fed to us whether we like it or not. As adults we can pick and choose what interests us.

Like others, history at school wasn’t interesting but since leaving school I have always found it fascinating.

I hated history at school, I think it was the awful dry way it was taught and we never touched on modern history at all. I gave it up as a subject as soon as I could but once I left school I developed an interest and now love it.

I love history. It's where we've come from. I went back to college in my 40s and amongst other things I did Social History. That covers the industrial revolution onwards and doesn't concentrate on kings and queens. It was fascinating.

I really love history too. In my case I love it not because, but in spite of my history teacher, who would hoist her brogues up onto the desk at the front of class and settle down to read her Times, after telling “us chaps” which chapter of our textbook to read and handing out sheets of questions to answer on it. Inspirational she was not, but she was very knowledgeable and had an obvious love of her subject which must have somehow filtered through to me.

There is far more to history than kings, queens and violence. I think GSM mentioned social history but what about local history a subject that I find fascinating I found that moving into a new area that was in Wales so many folk had a real interest and it was a really good way to know people. House history is interesting too

We're driving home from the cinema at the moment having been to watch "Napoleon," my husband's choice.
At the end there was a list of his battles: 3,000,000 dead.
Somehow I don't think you'd enjoy it, Luckygirl!

When we stayed in Venice we didn't go to the museums, we'd been advised to just wander and soak in the atmosphere.
I really enjoyed observing the way the locals lived. Our hotel room window looked out onto residential apartments. I could watch the women hanging their washing on pulley lines, shaking their rugs and calling to each other across the square. Fascinating 😊

GrannySomerset

When I was a primary school teacher in the 70s over three years we followed a wonderful ITV schools programme called “How We Used to Live” which took us from the Industrial Revolution to the 1970s. We got so much from it, including devising a questionnaire for grandparents about social change in their lifetime, designing a Victorian town park, and creating shopping lists for a family for 1890, 1930 and 1970. Lots of research and discussion and real learning. Can’t teach like that now, sadly, but I can’t imagine any of those children dismissing history as dull.

So did we!

When I was a primary school teacher in the 70s over three years we followed a wonderful ITV schools programme called “How We Used to Live” which took us from the Industrial Revolution to the 1970s. We got so much from it, including devising a questionnaire for grandparents about social change in their lifetime, designing a Victorian town park, and creating shopping lists for a family for 1890, 1930 and 1970. Lots of research and discussion and real learning. Can’t teach like that now, sadly, but I can’t imagine any of those children dismissing history as dull.

I preferred geography at school and didn't pay much attention to history. Only since I have reached my mature years have I developed an interest in history. I guess my teacher at school did not make the subject interesting enough. I knew all the dates of wars, magna carta and such but there was never an in depth portrayal of the individual people

What a strange attitude, Luckygirl.
You are part of history, the events that are happening now, and it is impossible to understand the present without having some understanding of what happened before, and how past events shape the future. Wars, battles, reigns, are simply the framework to identify different periods.

History and social geography my two favourites

Looks like you’re in the minority Luckygirl

History is full of people who inspire us.

I love history too. It was always one of my favourite subjects at school.
I am 43% of my way through that diary of Samuel Pepys, just into January 1665. I learned about the great comet from this book, I'd never heard about it anywhere else.

Are you ok Luckygirl?

Yes, world events are depressing and worrying at the moment. But it is not all so.

Oh dear, there is more to history than doom and gloom.

I believe the study of history makes people more tolerant because you begin to understand the dangers of extremism.

I guess that is one of the reasons I do not like it, as nothing has changed really. The dangers of extremism are so obvious, and yet on it marches, and people continue to die in their thousands.

I think I might have shown more interest if:
- the study of history had taught us lessons into how to live now.
- I had had a decent teacher - mine was yawn worthy to the nth degree.
- I had learned about how people lived rather than just the tales of killing and power grabs.

I guess I find it depressing as nothing has changed at all. It is the same old same old perpetuation of evil.