Why is Your History Class so Boring?

History is an argument not a PowerPoint.

But beyond that let’s ask the simple question: What is history for?

At its core history is an argument over two fundamental questions:

• What happened?
• What does it mean?

Young people do “history” all the time.

Take your average boy-girl relationship drama. There’s a big time break up and naturally everyone started asking “What happened?”

“Oh I heard they’re going off to college,”

“I heard they cheated on them,”

“I heard they didn’t really break up at all. They fight all the time.”

Sound familiar?

Then, there’s the debate over what something means.

Are they now single? Are they upset and feuding? Is science class going to be awkward now?

We do it with emojis too. One person’s smiley face is another person’s frowns sarcastic face.

Young people have argumentative super powers and great history taps into that.

You’re bored because history is being presented to you as a set of facts rather than an ongoing fight.

History is an argument not a PowerPoint.