Now, I suspect lots of people from all walks of life get this, but I only have my only biases to rely on:
I just got back from vacationing in Hawaii. I shared my shuttle to the Honolulu airport with a family, on their way to another island. The mom, a very nice lady, asked me about what I do. I explained my work (heh) and then concluded by saying I would like to get a PhD in history.
She replied, "Oh, history, my worst subject. That's my least favorite subject."
Why? Why do people say that? What am I supposed to take from that? To work harder as an educator? To switch to another field?
I'm sorry my greatest love is your greatest hate. There's a Romeo and Juliet story in here somewhere.
1 comment:
Why do people hate history? Now, I love it, but in high school I hated it. How boring the 13 colonies were with the Federalist papers. Gag. And I felt so guilty because my grandfather was an eminent historian of American history, first PhD in history from Johns Hopkins, taught etc, published The American Revolution considered as a Social Movement which is still in print from Princeton and translated into many languages with my brother receiving miniscule royalty checks - and I confess to have never read it because it seemed so boring. Sadly I never knew my grandfather J. Franklin, who died before I was born, but the history I wanted was British, with queens and castles and romance. Not drab pilgrims and mud. I wonder if any of this is a factor for people who don't like history? But then consider Loewen's Lies my teacher told me about the intentional inaccuracies of history books for American high schools. Could that be a factor too?
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