hello and welcome back to yet another episode of the quirky inquiry. It's a new beginning of a new year, so we're gonna begin this year by talking about a topic that I'd never ever touched upon before. So I've been meaning to make a video about history for a long, long time now because history is one of the areas of study that really fascinates me. Not just because it's history, but history really is the context and the backbone of all the other things that have interested I'm interested in literature, interested in Oh science, interested in philosophy, and interesting poetry, all that kind of stuff. They all are connected together by the sort of historical context and by the sort of historical backbone. So whatever literature, whatever poetry, on whatever philosophy that you read, there are not inventions that comes out of a vat in an empty vacuum. They're not just the brain sitting in the vat and then I think, therefore I am. They cards sitting in his room alone. They didn't come in isolation. It's not invented out of a vacuum as rationalists.

would like to assume, but instead, it is really history. History is a product, or rather the fields of studies that we come into contact with today are all products of historical contexts. Philosophers dealt with different problems in the past to a specific history. Historical contexts scientific theories are invented in response to a certain paradigm of viewing the world, and an ideas changed throughout time. The definition of madness have morphed dramatically throughout the centuries, which is the title of the book Math and Civilization by Michel Foucault, which I have been reading for the past week or so. Nevertheless, that is the importance of studying history because it is what brings everything together, and it is what gives context to every other field of studies out there. So, studying history comes into supreme importance if you care about being a renaissance person, if you care about understanding what human beings are doing here on earth, and then what is our purpose, what is the meaning of all this. If you want to truly understand that, history is the way to go down. But the problem here comes, how do you

probably study history. How do you probably interpret historical events? How do you relate the events to the significance of the events, and how do you make sense of it all? Because if you miss read history, if you read history in a very shoddy fashion, what's gonna start to happen is that all you're gonna have is a bunch of scattered events in your brain. You can recall dates, you can recall events, you can know what exactly happened, but there's no real cohesion happening history for you. If you study it in a wrong way, are just gonna be a collection of scattered events, a collection of quotes, a collection of people, and a collection of people's ideas. There's no real cohesion that gives you this ah, the sense of odd that it gives you. There's no real passion or Rijn or genuine interest if you approach history in the wrong manner. So in this video, let me correct that paradigm of viewing history. Let me introduce a new way of doing history that's gonna drastically increase two things, increase your level of accurate understanding of

history your level of interpretation and also increase your interest in this area of study because history is sort of a lengthy journey and to study history state is to investing a lot of time and then the amount of reading that you have to do it's truly paramount there's a lot of reading that you have to do to make sense of history okay so it's gonna increase two things your interesting history and also the righteous accurate understanding there's a bad habit if we've picked up from school and this is the bad habit that I sort of disagree with or this is the sort of doing things that I disagree with within the educational system which is that there's a heavy emphasis on memorization instead of application let me repeat that there's a heavy emphasis on memorization instead of application of specific facts specific dates and specific concepts throughout history so when a history student when history student cracks open a history textbook for example at the American Revolution history textbook when they crack open that book there's this knee-jerk reaction for students to

memorize things to knee-jerk Lee focus on every little detail as possible. To capture every detail as possible to try to attempt to memorize all these technical details to try to really dig deep into the dates. When exactly did something happen? Who was involved in it? And who wrote this thing that came to contribute to what influence? So there's a knee-jerk ration for people when they approach historical studies to find this memorization to be the supreme importance. To put memorization above understanding. So therefore, you have people constructing all sorts of fancy flashcards. You have people summarizing notes as they're reading. You have people highlighting every aspect of the history textbook. But at the end of the study, you ask him, Oh, what is the significance of XYZ? All that they can do is to regurgitate the facts without actually offering any critical thinking behind that history. So that's the knee-jerk reaction that we've been there only toe that's the way to do things. And that's the knee-jerk reaction.

that we all have when we do subjects such as literature, when we do subjects such as philosophy, or such as history at school. Now, there's benefits to memorization, but let's not put the horse, I mean let's not put the cart, in front of a horse here. There's a different orders of magnitude to memorization, but we shouldn't get the order wrong. Ask yourself, why are you studying history in the first place? Are you now studying history because you want to know the general progression of history, at least based on a structuralist definition? You are spotting a general trend of what is happening throughout time. You're outlining what the humans are doing through that specific era of time. For example, the American Revolution. Why did it come to the land and why is it the case that they start to rebel against the British? You want to note that general trend line and you want to understand the motives, the motivations, and all sorts of historical packages that comes with this sort of revolutionary sentiment. You want to understand that, that's the core thing.

that you need to understand. So now, what most people do is that they put the card in front of a horse. When they study history, they worry about, Oh, some guy died, died of a lightning strike in seventy-eighty three because he rebelled against the British government or something like that. They go jumping to the specific little details first. They worry about the trees before actually getting a holistic view of the entire forest. Now what is turning to is them collecting random facts from the history textbook. Oh, okay, there's a guy by the name of something and he died in the tide in a Boston Massacre. And then, in fact, he was a man of color. So yeah, that's a random fact that I should document down. Or there's another guy by the name of, there's this French guy from France by the name of Lafayette and he came to America when he was 19 years old. And then, Oh, that guy, okay, let me document that fact right, that fact hour right there along with the dates. So then, this turns into this sort of scavenger hunt of random

information, and this also contributes back to the lack of cohesion later on when you face your analysis tasks, or source analysis, or essay tasks in the future. So instead of collecting random facts, which is a laborious process, and instead of collecting all these quotes that you couldn't really memorize without much context, so that's the problem with collecting random information. It's because there's no real context to ground all of these pieces of information. Your mind is not functioning as a map that maps all of these things together to make you understand it in a cohesive manner, but instead, you're just collecting random pieces of tree barks. You're not exactly seeing the entire forest bathing set. You're worrying about the little tree that's in front of you, right? So there's no real context for you to ground any of your facts in. There's no real context for you to ground pieces of information in. So therefore, there's no cohesion in your historical studies. Instead, what you want to do is to gain a holistic view of the entire picture first. Lay out the backbone first.

instead of putting a card in front of a horse, so to speak, so instead of reading every little detail of it. You want to gain a very broad overview of what exactly is happening. You want to gain a very broad inspection of the entire scenery, okay, from maybe 70-54, the Seven Years War. Okay, let me take a look at that, okay, the Albany Congress or something like that, and you just start from that point, okay, start from the Albany Congress all the way to the Declaration of Independence. Let me just rethread, adding a linear progression without worrying about the details. And what's gonna start to happen is that as you assemble these informations on a trend line as you aim to gain a holistic understanding instead of getting bogged down in the details. Once the backbone is laid out, then you go back to your minutiae. Then you go back to your little facts. Then the facts will be effortlessly for you to memorize because once you have the backbone, you can just simply attach different facts upon this backbone without much fuss.

problem with the conventional way of picking everything up is that it is analogous to if you want to build your Prometheus in Frankenstein. For example, if Dr. Frankenstein wants to build his permit, it's the wrong approach is to build the Prometheus from the toe to the head, to start from every little nerve from the front, from the toe, and to build this thing from the ground up without a skeleton. So that's the wrong approach. That's gonna take a lot longer. You're not gonna know what goes where, and all you have is this collection of scattered information with how much cohesion. But instead, Dr. Frankenstein has a layout that stays the skeletal structures first. Dr. Frankenstein has to get the skeleton right before he can attach the nurse, attach to organs, and finally attach to finer details of the skin of the muscle groups, and finally construct the Prometheus right. Similarly with history, you need a backbone before you can put up all of my new shop. First, you need the skeleton, the skeletal structure first.

before you can put in all to random little details, so how can we apply this practically? So, practically, if you would to read history, the first time that you read a historic history textbook, you read it like a novel. Okay, read a history textbook like a novel the first time that you were approached. So, this is the importance of pre-reading before classes. Pre-read through the entire chapter without taking notes, without worrying about the little details, without worrying about the dates, but instead pick up pick up a general trend line, pick up this entire school Edo structure that you're in, that you're gonna later gonna use. So, when you go to class, when you listen to your teacher's lectures, now you can begin the process of attaching organs to your Prometheus, you can begin the process of attaching little information to your backbone structure, which you've already laid out in your pre-reading. So, after the lecture, then you can start to construct your notes, and then taking notes at this point, it's just effortless because you know what goes where, what's happening.

what things are significant, while others are not, instead of coming in contact with a bunch of information not knowing what goes where what is more important than the other, and what is worth memorizing, and what is not. So, this backbone right here is really gonna serve you well. So, yep, that's what I have to say about history. Very short, not exactly that short, but a very brief introduction into historical reading. Happy New Year and happy holidays. This is the Creek enquiry signing off right now.

It's Not About Memorization - How to Study History

Video essays on how to be a lifelong student. 