YouTube Historians/HistoryTube/PopHistory

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

The teacher was really cool

I always got really lucky with my history teachers being cool and teaching outside the curriculum.

 

[Professor Donger]

I always got really lucky with my history teachers being cool and teaching outside the curriculum.

More teachers need to do that; it'd help students out a lot. Ironically, some of the better history teachers I had were college professors, specifically because their classes were much more informal and they encouraged discussion. Though a lot of them were still leftist fags.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

More teachers need to do that; it'd help students out a lot. Ironically, some of the better history teachers I had were college professors, specifically because their classes were much more informal and they encouraged discussion. Though a lot of them were still leftist fags.

My worst teachers were typically either science or social studies teachers because they were always leftist faggots and science teachers were always going on and on about how great the metric system was and how Americans are too stupid to use it or whatever.

 

[Computer God Autism]

More teachers need to do that; it'd help students out a lot. Ironically, some of the better history teachers I had were college professors, specifically because their classes were much more informal and they encouraged discussion. Though a lot of them were still leftist fags.

One of my favorite teachers in college was, regrettably, a neocon, but he ran his Roman History class like the Senate and we had to have policy debates based on the information available at the time. One student really, really, liked larping as Cato the Elder.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

One student really, really, liked larping as Cato the Elder.

Every man has to larp as Cato the Elder at least once in his life.

 

[Smashed & Slamed]

My public school education:
>An entire year dedicated to antiquity, from Mesopotamian societies to the fall of Rome
>An entire year dedicated to the middle ages, from Charlemagne to the discovery of the Americas
>An entire year dedicated to modern history, from the Age of Discovery (actually called that, not "muh colonialism") to WW1
>An entire year dedicated to contemporary history, from WW1 to the fall of the Eastern Bloc
>All this between 5th and 8th grade
Hungarian history education stays winning.

Since we're all listing our schooling:
>A year of grug to Rome
>A year of Medieval
>A year of Modern
>A year of Romanian history from Grug to Modern
Then in HS:
>A year of Romanian Grug to Rome
>A year of Romanian Medieval
>A year of Romanian Early Modern
>A year of Romanian Late Modern

Honestly can't really complain about the breath of my education but maybe about the depth. The Romanian side was pretty deep but the generalist side was a bit too wide to really get that much across.

 

[JJLiautaud]

I took nothing but AP history classes(college 'prep' classes for non burgers) in HS and it was fineish although APUSH was retarded straight Zinn and Beard i brought up their methodological issues i got told to more or less to shut up

 

[MyBallsItch]

I always got really lucky with my history teachers being cool and teaching outside the curriculum.

I can tell you: it's simply a case of the teacher giving a shit.

Let's take Hungarian history as an example: usual midwittery in this instance would be "cousinfuckers bad, Turks bad (but arguably not that bad because muh baths), Transylvania good". A midwit teacher would leave it at that and let you cope and seethe about the Habsburgs ruining Hungary or something.
A good teacher would highlight that:
- Ferdinand tried to get Hungarian nobles to pay their taxes (which they were exempt from as per the 1222 Golden Bull and were propping up a traitor who wanted to get the entire Kingdom of Hungary to become an Ottoman vassal - something I assume @Smashed & Slamed can attest wasn't fun at all).
- Failing that, Ferdinand (and his brother Charles) forced the Austrian nobles and the hundreds of German states in the HRE doing fuck all to pay the Türkenhilfe to keep what remained from Hungary from falling into Turkish hands by constructing forts and manning them with trained mercenaries (because the Hungarian nobles either couldn't levy peasants from lands they no longer occupied or were opportunistic fucks who deliberately tried to keep the pressure on the Habsburgs)
- Transylvania tried several times to make contact with the Habsburgs to get the Ottoman Empire to back off (which either lead to the Prince of Transylvania being deposed or abdicating and leaving the country to be ruled by a general who knows fuck all about administration like Giorgio Basta)
- Most spats between Hungary and the Habsburgs were not aimed at gaining sovereignty (the hajdú revolt was about Catholic-Calvinist fuckery, Rákóczi petinioned the Ottoman sultan to have Hungary become a vassal of theirs, 1848 was about the constitutional crisis that Kossuth spiralled into a YOLO attempt at independence knowing fully well that the prospect of tearing the Habsburg Empire apart and leaving a power vaccuum for Russia to fill would not be in any of the great powers' interests)
- The uptick in anti-Habsburg sentiment was a side-effect of communists trying to repaint the complicated history of feudal society into a simple oppressed (in this case, Hungarians - very ironic) and oppressor (Habsburgs) dynamic

History is all about interests. Was it in the Habsburgs' interests to have an entire 300 thousand square kilometer double decker Royale with Croatia eaten up by the Turks? Fuck no. It was prime real estate in every metric, which is why they kept clinging on to it even though the Hungarian nobility were being pricks. Was it in the Hungarian nobility's interest to leave the kingdom defenseless enough to squeeze additional privileges out from the king in exchange for a token number of troops? Oh yes.

The official curriculum includes simple dates (like the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699), improtant figures (Ferdinand, Gábor Bethlen, etc.) and a map where you can pinpoint the literal fucking capitals of Hungary, Serbia and Austria. But half of my own teachers (and glad to say, my own self) were autistic enough that they didn't let the vagueness of the curriculum stop them from dropping truth nukes.
The nukes are in pipe bomb form and the mail delivery service is the students' own train of thought in this instance, because methodology is all about manipulating kids into thinking they arrived at the conclusion by themselves. Seeing them feel the gains of their brain-muscle is rewarding too.

 

[Radola Gajda]

I had History as subject both in Elementary and Highschool. And trust me I went to highschool that was as far removed from subject of history as possible.
We started with early Hominids.
Evolution of man.
Stone Age.
Bronze age Middle East.
And page about Bronze age India , China and pre Columbian civilisations of America.
Ancient Greece
Ancient Rome
Republic
Empire
Fall of Rome.
Germanic tribes
Celtic tribes
Arrival of Slavs.
Charlegmane.
Samo
Great Moravia
Early Přemyslids
Formation of HRE
Crusades
100 years war+ war of the Roses
1212 Golden Bull of Sicily
Last of the Přemyslids
Lucemburks
Charles IV.
Hussite wars.
Jiří z Poděbrad
Jagellions
Ottoman Empire
Discovery of Murrica and other exploration.
Habsburgs
Protestant reformation.
30 Years War.
Maria Theresia + Joseph II.
US war of Independence.
French Revolution + Napoleonic wars.
Industrial Revolution+ revolutionary 1848
American civil war
World war 1.
Czechoslovak legions.
Russian Civil War
Stalin
Nazi Germany
Interwar Czechoslovakia
WW2
Holocaust and other atrocities
Cold War (basically highlights of each decade Space Race, Vietnam, hippies, 1968 Prague Spring, Cuban Crisis.... )

 

[Smashed & Slamed]

Let's take Hungarian history as an example: usual midwittery in this instance would be "cousinfuckers bad, Turks bad (but arguably not that bad because muh baths), Transylvania good". A midwit teacher would leave it at that and let you cope and seethe about the Habsburgs ruining Hungary or something.

I had a very good teacher. Like a published historian not just guy with a pedagogy degree and a minor in history. And he did things like that, but more for the late modern period. He had his own biases, somewhere between old school liberal and paleo con but biases or not he did try and pain a fairer picture. Like for WW2 we had to learn about the ideologies of the period. And he did give each ideology a fair shake. I remember when talking about the Legion, the Iron Guard that at least by being Anti Commie they had some good points and so he reluctantly agreed.

I think though what a good teacher, especially in Grade school or High School must do is simply get kids willing to learn and think things through. Even with a more intense history schooling you still only get like 4 hours a week for 8 months, that's not that much time to broach a subject close enough to be informed but with skill you can be educated, aka know the summary and know where to start your own research if you give a shit. And the proof of how good a teacher he was is that he managed to get a few PhDs out of our HS class.

- Ferdinand tried to get Hungarian nobles to pay their taxes (which they were exempt from as per the 1222 Golden Bull and were propping up a traitor who wanted to get the entire Kingdom of Hungary to become an Ottoman vassal - something I assume @Smashed & Slamed can attest wasn't fun at all).

People generally have no clue how much damage the Ottomans have done to the Balkans. In about almost 700 years of them being there they have done less development, even over muslim areas then the Russians did in Siberia. All the Ottomans did was rape and plunder. Not even efficiently mind you. And the cultural if not outright epigenetic or genetic effects is that all populations in the Balkans are predisposed to petty corruption, graft and inaction unless tied to direct reward. Luckily it's a predisposition not an outright guarantee and maybe with time it will fix it's self.

- The uptick in anti-Habsburg sentiment was a side-effect of communists trying to repaint the complicated history of feudal society into a simple oppressed (in this case, Hungarians - very ironic) and oppressor (Habsburgs) dynamic

On a tangent in spite of Romania being in part in the old Austrian crown holdings and kingdom of Hungary our history on that side is very weak and gentle. Matthias Corvinus is seen as great guy, in part because he is a quarter Romanian, even though he fucked over everything by not having an heir or a plan. And then we learn about the Austrian period, going hint hint nudge nudge the Austrians were less dickish than the Hungarians. Touching on stuff like Josephs reforms, but also how Maria Theresa was a cunt for forceful conversion. And then we don't really learn anything in between except Hungarians were really really tyrannical with their Trio Natinoum pact. And to add a tangent on tangent don't know how the current manuals are but the ones I had did have these small little side stories with the lessons like about the Italo Austrian war because a Romanian officer became nobility for his deeds in that war. Or the Romanian Legion in Russia and Italy... Those are really neat and help make kids interested, not just curriculum till you die.

History is all about interests. Was it in the Habsburgs' interests to have an entire 300 thousand square kilometer double decker Royale with Croatia eaten up by the Turks? Fuck no. It was prime real estate in every metric, which is why they kept clinging on to it even though the Hungarian nobility were being pricks. Was it in the Hungarian nobility's interest to leave the kingdom defenseless enough to squeeze additional privileges out from the king in exchange for a token number of troops? Oh yes.

There are too many people who through time act against their interests, intentionally or not for that mentality to be the whole truth. One thing I have noticed is mental inertia, people build a space in their mind and do not like changing the shape of it. The nothing ever happens syndrome until your whole world is dead and you've refused to adapt.

 

[Squanto Airi]

I remember world history in 10th grade, US history in 11th grade, and US Government in 12th.

The only weird part was said US History teacher giving praise to the Nazi generals while not saying much on the Confederate ones (note I was in the south, in a primarily white school).

 

[Trig.Point]

I don't know if anyone listens or watches the We Have Ways of Making You Talk podcast with James Holland and Al Murray. I find them a bit grating and I think James Holland shits out fathers day history books.

However in their recent series they covered up German plans for Operation Barbarossa, and at various points, Holland flat out states that Stalin provoked the invasion by not abiding by the terms of the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact, and that Russia was almost certainly going to invade Romania and Bulgaria in 1941. Which is why so much Russian military force was built up in the border regions.

I wonder if he only said it because the audience was quite small (but lucrative) but still it's one of those concepts that's a few steps away from wikipedia jannies labeling it as revisionist conspiracy theory.

I didn't take time stamp, and I'm not watching them again because Al Murray is fucking annoying.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

Our history teacher assigned us homework to imagine that we were alive during those days and write a letter to the president advocating for or against the atomic bomb's usage against Japan. We were not allowed to use future knowledge in our letters and would be docked points if we relied on information that would not have been available in early 1945.

ETA: early 1945, not early 1944. My bad.

trick essay. no one wouldve known about the nuclear bombs being used until they were actually used day of

 

[naaaaiiiiillllll!!!]

Probably why I like watching/listening to History YouTube so much: I was technically home-schooled, but my parents barely graduated high school in a different century, so it turned into me largely teaching myself. It worked out because I was one of those kids who read encyclopedias for fun (OG Wikipedia blew my pre-teen mind). My home study program had decent-ish textbooks, but I used them more as a foundation to study/read stuff I was interested in (mostly STEM, but history has always had a place in my heart).

I will say, I remember my US History textbook really emphasizing tariffs being a big part of the Civil War (almost more than slavery, which is mildly based I guess?). It even discussed them during pre-Revolutionary War America, which I guess is a bit of literary foreshadowing.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

trick essay. no one wouldve known about the nuclear bombs being used until they were actually used day of

With the caveat that you would have been some form of advisor and had information about the Manhattan Project and the Trinity test.

 

[The Secret Sauce]

APUSH was retarded straight Zinn and Beard

APUSH was the absolute worst for me. I actually got sent to the office for "disrupting class" during the obligatory Rosa Parks section. I had the temerity to point out that I was last in line for school lunch every day from kindergarten to high school due to my last name, and asking if I should sue the school district for this discrimination (and yes, everyone clapped). The really weird thing about it was that the teacher was also my football coach, and he was extremely politically incorrect outside of the classroom.

 

[MyBallsItch]

I will say, I remember my US History textbook really emphasizing tariffs being a big part of the Civil War (almost more than slavery, which is mildly based I guess?).

What's funny is that over here, the discussion of the American Civil War is the following:
- The Confederate soldier fought for his right to secede
- The Union soldier fought to teach them secessionist traitors a lesson
- Slavery? Very much lopsided as a motivating factor since the Confederacy's economy was retarded and needed them negroes (thus the secession) while the average Union soldier couldn't give a flying fuck about slavery (hell, there were desertions and mutinies over the Emancipation Proclamation) so the predditor pretense that the Yankees were an army of progressive libruls is bunkum.

Just for shits and giggles: the following video is an artist's rendition of how Buddha is taught to 6th grade Hungarians.

0:06

 

[Kyria the Great]

Our history teacher assigned us homework to imagine that we were alive during those days and write a letter to the president advocating for or against the atomic bomb's usage against Japan. We were not allowed to use future knowledge in our letters and would be docked points if we relied on information that would not have been available in early 1945.

ETA: early 1945, not early 1944. My bad.

I love when teachers truly attempt to have you engage in such a manner. I feel history is best engaged how people of the time would have thought and the knowledge they had. I believe there's actual proper debate over the ethics and merit of dropping an untested weapon over your enemy.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

I love when teachers truly attempt to have you engage in such a manner. I feel history is best engaged how people of the time would have thought and the knowledge they had. I believe there's actual proper debate over the ethics and merit of dropping an untested weapon over your enemy.

There is and that was what our teacher was trying to instill in us was that both sides had legitimate reasons for wanting or not wanting to drop the bomb and actually went through both side's points with us.

 

[Smashed & Slamed]

What's funny is that over here, the discussion of the American Civil War is the following:
- The Confederate soldier fought for his right to secede
- The Union soldier fought to teach them secessionist traitors a lesson
- Slavery? Very much lopsided as a motivating factor since the Confederacy's economy was retarded and needed them negroes (thus the secession) while the average Union soldier couldn't give a flying fuck about slavery (hell, there were desertions and mutinies over the Emancipation Proclamation) so the predditor pretense that the Yankees were an army of progressive libruls is bunkum.

Imagine being taught about the ACW in an European school. We spent the modern period on 1848 and the death rattles of absolutism. ACW was mentioned in passing because after it ended we finally also ended slavery to not look dumb.