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I wish there was an age appropriate way to make history classes not boring
I hope they’ve improved by now, but when I was a kid I always thought history was the most boring subject. Just a lot of trying to remember things that happened unbelievably long ago. It all just seemed random.
And I think it was random because for history to make sense you have to know things that would not be necessarily ideal for children to know.
I grew up in Oak Ridge, TN. Famously known as the Radioactive city because of their work on the atomic bombs. We did a unit on local history in 4th grade and we talked a lot about how secretive our city was. “Even Knoxville didn’t know what we were up to!” I remember our teacher saying. Maybe the bombs were mentioned at some point, but I was a pretty good student so I feel like I would remember. I remember learning about how all the houses looked the same. Those are fun little details I guess, but like Knoxville I also did not know what was going on.
It makes sense. I wouldn’t want to explain atomic bombs to a bunch of little kids either.
In high school, no longer in Tennessee, I remember learning about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. It makes sense that an incident where workers are trapped inside during a fire would lead to change.
