My ability to learn history improved greatly when I stopped perceiving it as “A random collection of facts I have to memorize” and started noticing the regularities that link things together. Knowing that World War II was fought amongst major world powers around 1942 lets you infer that it was fought using automobiles and aeroplanes, and knowing that the American Revolution was fought in the late 1700s lets you infer the opposite, even if you don’t know anything else specific about the wars.
True, you can derive new information from previously learned information. But patterns like ‘there were no cars in the american revolution’ aren’t going to score you anything or get radically new information. And theres no way to derive a lot of the information.
My ability to learn history improved greatly when I stopped perceiving it as “A random collection of facts I have to memorize” and started noticing the regularities that link things together. Knowing that World War II was fought amongst major world powers around 1942 lets you infer that it was fought using automobiles and aeroplanes, and knowing that the American Revolution was fought in the late 1700s lets you infer the opposite, even if you don’t know anything else specific about the wars.
True, you can derive new information from previously learned information. But patterns like ‘there were no cars in the american revolution’ aren’t going to score you anything or get radically new information. And theres no way to derive a lot of the information.