Although the name of my Psychology Today blog is Remember the Alamo (a name not chosen but approved by me), I recently realized that I didn't remember much at all about the Alamo. I knew it involved a famous battle in Texas with an outcome that was memorable, at least to some people, but that's about all I could have told you. Luckily, a quick search on Wikipedia helped me fill in the rest of the details.
The trouble I have remembering historical facts may not concern you, but it concerns me. After all, I took history courses throughout high school and even into college, and I did well in them. Why have I forgotten so much history in the intervening years?
My amnesia for history disturbs me even more when I think back to my childhood. I would often ask my parents questions from my history homework or talk to them about what I'd learned in class. They always knew the answers and were familiar with everything I was learning. Even my dad, who didn't move to the U.S. until he was in his twenties, seemed to know more about U.S. history than I do now.
The gaping holes in my historical knowledge may reflect a change in the educational system, which these days places less of an emphasis on memorization and more of an emphasis on critical thinking skills. My mom can still recite all of the Presidents of the United States in order, whereas I have trouble remembering who half of them even were. I haven't forgotten them so much as I never learned them in the first place. However, if you gave me a work of historical non-fiction to read, I bet I could give you a more thorough analysis of the historian's thesis than my mom, as this was something I practiced many times in my schooldays.
Is a shift in education from rote repetition and recitation to critical thinking and analysis necessarily a bad thing? Now that we have the internet at our fingertips maybe there is no need to memorize history. A recent article in Newsweek discussed the possibility that today's youth aren't dumber, they've just learned different types of cognitive skills. These new ways of processing information are necessary to thrive in today's electronic era.
Maybe so, but I would still feel better about myself if I didn't have to use the internet every time I wanted to know something about history. It seems sad to me that one day my children will ask me about the U.S. Civil War, and I'll have to say "go look it up on the computer," rather than have a ready answer.
I am not despairing yet. Recently, my mom reminded me that she took a U.S. history class when I was growing up, oddly enough in order to reestablish her teaching credentials as a French teacher. Around that same time, my dad became a U.S. citizen and took a U.S. history class as part of the citizenship process. Maybe a history refresher course is all I need. In the meantime, there's always Wikipedia.
