I’m a history buff, especially the dawn of the Space Age, World War 2, the English monarchy, the medieval period, and the Roman empire. But what made me love history was when I started to see the interconnectedness of it. The Moon landings were connected to Cold War hysteria of being able to deliver nuclear weapons without aircraft (the true cause of the Space Race), which is connected to the rocket scientists “extracted” by the Americans and Russians at the end of World War 2, which is connected to Hitler’s dreams of empire and his antisemitism, which is connected to the virulent antisemitism of Martin Luther, which is connected to the Reformation and the middle ages, which is connected to the rearrangement of European nations and cultures after the collapse of the Roman Empire, which culture had its roots in Ancient Greece, which grew from ancient Egypt and the Babylonian empire, and on and on…
Maybe history should be taught backward. The idea of history is to show us how we got here… so maybe we should work from here to there rather than there to here. Just a thought.
And any cable channel that has “history” in the name could probably do a lot more good showing the interconnectedness of today with yesterday than alien autopsies, conspiracy theories and the like.
On the other hand, if modern history has taught me anything, it’s that alien autopsies and conspiracy theories always get a bigger audience than actual history.
ArcherVox 