History that does NOT interest you

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by Dd714

And then there is Sting's view:

"Our written history is a catalogue of crime
The sordid and the powerful, the architects of time
The mother of invention, the oppression of the mild
The constant fear of scarcity, aggression as its child

History will teach us NOTHING"

Said Sting in the album liner notes about his Song "History Will Teach Us Nothing":
"I once asked my history teacher how we were expected to learn anything useful from his subject, when it seemed to me, to be nothing but a monotonous and sordid succession of robber baron scumbags devoid of any admirable human qualities.
I failed history."

Sounds to me like Sting wasn't bright enough to pass the course, so to justify his failure he attacks the entire subject as useless. That way he didn't fail, the subject itself was the failure.

[OpanaPointer]

Quite frankly, I'm not interested in the "little people". I was a little people, I know how much impact they have. I think the emphasis on the little people is a way for new grad students to have something original to write about, and more power to them, it's tough enough already.

Spoiler

BTW, I'm Irish on my parents' sides of the family, so when I say "little people" I mean Little People.

[2nd trick op]

Originally Posted by Brave New World

As Winston Churchill famously said - "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it"

Originally Posted by OpanaPointer

Santayana said it first, IIRC.

The quote is actually from Edmund Burke.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke

[Dd714]

Originally Posted by Grandstander

Sounds to me like Sting wasn't bright enough to pass the course, so to justify his failure he attacks the entire subject as useless. That way he didn't fail, the subject itself was the failure.

I suppose he was to busy with "Roxanne" at the time to study his history.

[2nd trick op]

Originally Posted by OpanaPointer

I had to take "Indiana History" in 8th grade. After a month the teacher and I reached an agreement and I spent that hour in the library.

Interesting; because at the time of my primary education -- we were indoctrinated in "Pennsylvania History" -- and about 10% of the text was devoted to Rep. Thaddeus Stevens whose greatest accomplishment (according to his sycophants) was that "he led the fight for public education in Pennsylvania".

Not one word was devoted to the fact that Stevens was the principal author of Reconstruction.

Proving once again (as we should all be aware) that there is a great deal of partisanship and distortion in the efforts of the NEA and others within the so-called "educational advocacy".

[Tracysherm]

I get very bored when a book or documentary on a historical period focuses too much on the actual fighting of wars and battles. Yawn. There have been shows on History channel that otherwise would have been perfectly good, but they spent too much time showing formations that soldiers took, diagrams of battle fields, and overkill on how a weapon was used.


I saw a miniseries on History recently that was about the Barbarians. The different groups who resisted the Romans. I was all happy. I wanted to see all the details of their societies, culture, religion, food, homes, leaders, etc, but it was 99% about battles and fighting. Complete with slow motion sword fighting and fake blood. Puh-lease.


I want to know the social and political forces that created the war, the motivations of the different sides in the war, the major people and figures and what their backgrounds were, and the impact of the battles on the ordinary people and ordinary lives. What was it LIKE. What happened before and after. Who were the people? How did they live and die? What did they believe in? How did they treat the injured? What was the technology like (not just for weapons)? What did they eat and how did they prepare it, whether in a town, out in the countryside, while on the march, or while camped at the actual battlefield. What were the conditions in the camp like? Who were those women and wagons that followed the soldiers and what was their life like?


But all that war/military strategy and diagramming just makes my eyes glaze over. All the details about weaponry. I'd rather watch a show on the actual hand-forging of iron swords than watch how people used them in battle with fake re-creations of fighting.

[OpanaPointer]

And I run the biggest non-military/non-commercial military history site on the Internet. Takes all kinds, don't it?

[Chubby Checker]

I hate a lot of the older pre - 1800 history stuff. That's all we're ever taught in school. I'd rather learn about more modern history (after 1800) or Pop - Culture history

[Clark Park]

Several years ago I thought certain periods of European history were boring ... like The Hundred Years War, for example.

Now I find the history of The Hundred Years War fascinating! It contributed to the making of modern Europe in so many ways.

[Old Gringo]

The make-believe what if fantasies that keep popping up in this "history" forum.