All those names and dates

Here’s a good brief Substack note posted by Joel Miller over the weekend:

In my experience, people who make this complaint have usually had a bad history teacher in high school—stereotypically, but often enough in reality, the football coach. This teacher did not teach so much as test on memorization. And what historical material lends itself most readily to memorization? Not why, the basic historical question, but who and when. Names and dates.

Such an approach has burned many, many people who might otherwise have been led into an appreciation—if not a love—for history, which is a shame because people are, by nature, historical beings.

Joel is right to find this criticism amusing, but it is amusing not only because to balk at names and dates is to avoid some of the basic components of history, but because the person making such a criticism will not mind names and dates at all in other areas. The example I’ve used before is someone’s favorite football team. Ask a guy how his favorite college team is doing and you’ll get a detailed narrative filled with sharply focused arguments about cause and effect—in recruitment, in trades, in the decisions of coaches, trainers, quarterbacks, the administration, and even fans—often covering the last several seasons. Bad luck like weather and injury will feature prominently, as will the advantages of changing material conditions and limitations and the folly and wisdom of good and bad leaders.

All of that is historical thought! And get two such guys together, ask them the same question, and they will differ in interpretation and emphasis. Guy 1 says that everyone knows Coach Blowhard is to blame for the bowl loss, but Guy 2 points out that Coach Blowhard had to use a lot of second stringers after the quarterback blew out his knee at practice (the ground crew overwatering the grass again) and those four linemen got academic suspension. And round and round we go. That’s historical debate!

One can do this with favorite TV shows, the arguments your kids get into, or local gossip. That’s because people are wired to view and explain their lives narratively, and reducing history to data doesn’t just undermine but works against that instinct.

Teachers have to pick their battles, and I don’t test on dates. (The students get plenty of names to remember, though.) I tell my students that memorizing dates to study history is like memorizing page numbers in your favorite book. Per Joel, the page numbers are definitely important—especially if you want to use what you learn and refer back to it—but they’re not why you pick up the book or what you remember afterward.