Context is King
When I was about halfway through high school, I became convinced that all high school teachers were idiots. I suppose there was some mindless teenage rebellion in it, but it was based on my experience with the public education system. Now, I went to a good high school. A very good high school. Most high schools would be lucky to be half as good as mine was. In hindsight, I'm very glad that my parents knew where to purchase real estate because my high school education has ended up working out well for me.
The problem was with the method by which we were taught certain subjects. English is the perfect example; I spent lots of time being made to read novels which never had, don't have, and never will have any bearing on my existence as a person. They're not relevant to my experience as a human being. I never had any problem learning and memorizing vocabulary words, because I always found a way to take advantage of those, and put them to good use in my writing. But reading some New York Times bestseller like The Joy Luck Club or Cold Sassy Tree (no, I'm not going to link to them, they're both terrible) is not helping me grow as a person.
Now, of the better English teachers I've had, the really good ones have made some attempt to explain why we're reading the books we are. They try to convey the significance of them. They explain the logic behind why some of that garbage is on recommended reading lists in public schools.
This helped, but wasn't quite enough. Take a work of literature like Dante's Inferno. It mattered back when Dante wrote it, and stirred up quite a bit of controversy. But without learning history first, you cannot appreciate the work to its full extent. Yeah, you can read it, and as long as you've read the Bible, you can get some of the satire, but without understanding Dante's motives, or what was happening in the world at the time he composed it, leaves a lot to be desired. It's like making kids 100 years from now watch episodes of "Family Guy". A lot of the jokes are cultural and would be lost on anyone 100 years from now, and more than half of the gags are based on pop culture of the 80s and 90s, which is sure to have been evicted from the average person's general knowledge a century later.
Learning without comprehension is difficult. Let's imagine that you want to write a report about the life of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. for school. To do so fully, and to understand him as a person, you need to understand what was happening during the Civil Rights movement back during the time that he lived. The significance of his actions is lost and difficult to comprehend if you just focus on what he did, without looking at how and why he did it.
Context is important. And history provides that context. I don't think you can study politics, religion, philosophy, literature, art, music, sociology, or a variety of other subjects without first studying the history associated with them. I'll admit that you can probably study something like calculus and succeed as an engineer without knowing anything about the life of Issac Newton. But for most things, you can't really comprehend anything to the full extent without some context.
Without understanding why, without learning the context, it's just rote learning. You memorize facts, dates, and trivia so you can pass examinations and get good grades. But learning is always easier if you have the context. The best teachers I've had in my life understood this, and not only explained to their students the context of historical events, but also explained why it should matter to us as people. They are able to bridge contexts of the past with the realities of the present. These are the teachers and professors that I still think of to this day, and remember as having made an impact on me as a person.
Perhaps I shouldn't have been so judgmental of my teachers in high school. Oh well. I was a spoiled kid in an overly-affluent suburban area. At the time, I didn't understand my own context in the class structure.
The problem was with the method by which we were taught certain subjects. English is the perfect example; I spent lots of time being made to read novels which never had, don't have, and never will have any bearing on my existence as a person. They're not relevant to my experience as a human being. I never had any problem learning and memorizing vocabulary words, because I always found a way to take advantage of those, and put them to good use in my writing. But reading some New York Times bestseller like The Joy Luck Club or Cold Sassy Tree (no, I'm not going to link to them, they're both terrible) is not helping me grow as a person.
Now, of the better English teachers I've had, the really good ones have made some attempt to explain why we're reading the books we are. They try to convey the significance of them. They explain the logic behind why some of that garbage is on recommended reading lists in public schools.
This helped, but wasn't quite enough. Take a work of literature like Dante's Inferno. It mattered back when Dante wrote it, and stirred up quite a bit of controversy. But without learning history first, you cannot appreciate the work to its full extent. Yeah, you can read it, and as long as you've read the Bible, you can get some of the satire, but without understanding Dante's motives, or what was happening in the world at the time he composed it, leaves a lot to be desired. It's like making kids 100 years from now watch episodes of "Family Guy". A lot of the jokes are cultural and would be lost on anyone 100 years from now, and more than half of the gags are based on pop culture of the 80s and 90s, which is sure to have been evicted from the average person's general knowledge a century later.
Learning without comprehension is difficult. Let's imagine that you want to write a report about the life of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. for school. To do so fully, and to understand him as a person, you need to understand what was happening during the Civil Rights movement back during the time that he lived. The significance of his actions is lost and difficult to comprehend if you just focus on what he did, without looking at how and why he did it.
Context is important. And history provides that context. I don't think you can study politics, religion, philosophy, literature, art, music, sociology, or a variety of other subjects without first studying the history associated with them. I'll admit that you can probably study something like calculus and succeed as an engineer without knowing anything about the life of Issac Newton. But for most things, you can't really comprehend anything to the full extent without some context.
Without understanding why, without learning the context, it's just rote learning. You memorize facts, dates, and trivia so you can pass examinations and get good grades. But learning is always easier if you have the context. The best teachers I've had in my life understood this, and not only explained to their students the context of historical events, but also explained why it should matter to us as people. They are able to bridge contexts of the past with the realities of the present. These are the teachers and professors that I still think of to this day, and remember as having made an impact on me as a person.
Perhaps I shouldn't have been so judgmental of my teachers in high school. Oh well. I was a spoiled kid in an overly-affluent suburban area. At the time, I didn't understand my own context in the class structure.