Graphic by William Gao ’24/The Choate News
One way to learn history is through a textbook: mastering dates and names until you can recite the book’s contents back to front. I often wonder how effective this method is, and I’ve concluded that it falls short at giving students the opportunity to put things into perspective. How do we fix the structure of the history class? What elements does the class need to be genuinely engaging and educational? Well, to answer those questions, I’ll tell you about my ideal class, what it would be about, how I would teach it, and how it would work.
The class would be called Bullet Point History: The Historical Moments That You Need to Know. The class examines pivotal points in history, focusing specifically on the moments that have altered, shaped, and informed the future. Over the course of the year, students would examine longer periods and patterns of change, but every week, the class would focus on a major event as it happened chronologically in history.
To teach these lessons, students would place themselves in these pivotal moments. The teacher would present them with a situation, and each student would be assigned a historical figure to represent or a perspective to portray. For homework, students would research their perspective and do reading on the event. During class, students might hold discussions, give important speeches, and debate with their peers, all representing their assigned perspective.
In addition, another cool homework component would be for the historical figures to get involved outside of class. For example, if you’re a president or a powerful politician, send out an address to the rest of your classmates-turned-fellow-participants in this makeshift society. If you are a journalist or artist, write an opinion or commentary piece about what is going on in the world at that time. Maybe someone might write a song or some poetry that is inspired by the plight that their character faces.
It would be crucial for students to get into character as well. I think that costumes and props, along with other distinguishing nuances, can give an entertaining aspect to the class and could help students feel more invested and interested in the decisions they make and the effort they put in. This class would give students opportunities to write about relevant news and topics, practice giving speeches and talking publicly, as well as collaborating with other classmates to solve complex issues, all crucial, and often overlooked, aspects of an education.
As a person who has a particular interest in history and the humanities, this is a class that would definitely appeal to me. A lot of reading and exploring that I did online when I was younger was to satisfy my desire to understand the context of every situation or every person that I had seen in a movie or in a book. Bullet Point History would give students a different approach to the study of the past. It would engage students with diverse interests, as this class gives opportunities to act, to debate, to write, to collaborate, and ultimately to learn.
