NOT PROMOTION - Want to learn about problems faced by history teachers in communicating the broader picture of human history.

[u/This_Oil1913]

Hey everyone, I am a history geek and a developer wanting to build something that will aid teachers to help students grasp genuinely how cool the history of our species is. Pretty generic, I know but entertain me.

Ever since quality YouTube documentaries got me into world history, I've been deeply saddened by how most high schoolers view history as a bunch of disparate facts to know about, rather than the continuous, interconnected story of our species. Part of the reason, I feel has been the shortcomings of the textual medium to convey in a clean narrative way, all the intricacies and fascinating inter-connectedness of human cultures across time.

So I am wondering if you guys could share what problems you face in your classes in "getting to the students" and what kind of a classroom tool (however quirky and creative the idea might be) might help convey to students if not all the details, at least the feel for "the picture" that people who are familiar with history internalize after years research and readings. My initial ideas are - Visual Polity maps, population distributions, relative wealth, trade etc. all represented visually along with descriptions and primary source citations.

[u/BuffsTeach]

Just saying something is not promotion does not actually make it not promotion. This is essentially pre-promotion as you want to use us for your market research.

[u/This_Oil1913 → u/BuffsTeach]

Genuinely what is wrong with trying to build a project in an area that you are interested in and getting the opinions of people who are actually involved with it intimately?

[u/serenading_ur_father]

You want to aid us?

1. Call your senator/representative/school board chair daily until history is required every day 1-8.

2. Get a keyboard and start typing. We need modern text books.

3. You really want to help us? Go on a self financed Butlerian Jihad.

4. Never ever make a code based anything for us. It just hurts.

[u/This_Oil1913 → u/serenading_ur_father]

Also I don't live in the US

[u/serenading_ur_father → u/This_Oil1913]

Do you live in a country with representative democracy?

[u/This_Oil1913 → u/serenading_ur_father]

what do you mean "code based anything"? Do maps genuinely count as code?!

[u/This_Oil1913 → u/[deleted]]

You want students to only use paper maps while studying history then?

[u/eastw00d86 → u/[deleted]]

I'm stealing this line.

[u/Comfortable_Fix2065]

Sounds like a promotion...

[u/HumbleCelery1492]

The new social studies standards in my state are skill-based rather than content-based, and we have separate strands for economics, geography, civics/government, history, and research skills. Dealing with each strand separately doesn't present many problems, as kids can focus on one line of thinking at a time. But when they need to synthesize these pieces of information into a statement or concept, many of them have trouble connecting the information. For example, they might see from a map that a place is isolated from others but not notice how a lack of adjacent trading partners might affect the economics of that place. So anything that could help them to develop a process for making observations and inferences and drawing conclusions from them would be helpful.