History Lessons by Richard Seltzer
Our London hotel was three blocks from the British Museum, but I turned the wrong way and was lost for hours, walking in circles. The streets changed names every few blocks, and the intersections were often curved or bent. I had my cellphone with me and could have checked Google Maps. I also could have asked for help. Instead, I enjoyed the scene and learned the neighborhood.
It occurred to me that this was an excellent teaching method — Education by Misdirection. Make the path to learning difficult rather than easy. Force students to build their own mental maps and patterns of association.
When my son, Bob, a chess prodigy, had lessons with a local master, Murray Turnbull, Murray would often make outrageous moves and challenge Bob to find ways to punish such mistakes.
My fifth-grade teacher, Robert Talbott Stevenson, deliberately included an ambiguous question in a hundred-question multiple-choice exam. “There are (many, few) gases in the atmosphere.” I knew that the atmosphere consisted mostly of nitrogen and oxygen, but there were also trace amounts of many other elements. So, of course, I chose “many.” I was shocked when he marked that wrong. I challenged him on that and was outraged when he wouldn’t change his mind. For several weeks, every day after school I’d consult our home encyclopedia (Funk & Wagnalls, bought volume-by-volume in the grocery store), and the next morning I’d report my findings in show-and-tell. There were traces of dozens of gases in addition to nitrogen and oxygen. The teacher’s intransigence prompted me to learn how to research and how to stand up for my ideas against authority. I got so caught up in the question that I learned a lot about the atmosphere and nearly decided to become an astronomer.
If I were a teacher, I would ask my class to do these exercises:
One — Watch videos of a sport that none of you is familiar with (e.g., for American audiences, cricket, rugby, or curling). Based solely on those videos, derive the rules of the game and come up with winning tactics and strategies.
Two — Read a substantial original work of history (such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus) and, based on the text, derive the laws and common practices of that time and place, as well as winning tactics and strategies for political and economic success.
Can we reconstruct the world view of the Middle Ages from our rambles through its history?
