Journey vs. Destination

My knowledge of history and geography are faintly embarrassing in their lack. I could blame is on the California public school system but, since my science and math knowledge exceeds normal, I suspect the fault is all me.

To me, history is just facts and figures. Occasionally, it is a story (Molly Pitcher!) but I don’t know if she was real or just a fable of like that of Washington’s cherry tree. I love stories but when truth and fiction are interwoven in grade school, I don’t know how to sort my adult knowledge; it is a safer assumption that I know very little. And I haven’t really cared before now.

I think I would have been more interested in history growing up in Virginia or Massachusetts. Things happened here. You can see where people fought and died. Looking at these green hills, it is easier to understand why they fought so hard.

We are passing many Civil War battlegrounds today. I remember that it was a bloody, terrible war either about slavery or states’ rights. I can name some battle sites but only a handful. I can name some of the generals but I’m not sure which fought on which side (the horror if I get one wrong will keep me quiet).

Yesterday, we finished listening to an audio book called Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell. It is a history of the Puritans in New England and the founding of Boston. I know we are going to see many of the places mentioned. I like knowing why the places are important and how they are connected, how the threads weave through the founding of the United States on through to the present day.

I don’t learn things, really remember them, unless they are woven into the other information in my head, ideally integrated with knowledge that I care about in some other way.

One Virginian license plate reported that then colony was founded in 1607. (For comparison, our rental car’s license plate has the California DMV website.) I don’t fathom the concept of “we’ve been here for four centuries”. In California, there are places of business with signs that say, “proudly serving the community since 2001”. I feel a little history-less both from lack of education and from living in a place where the history can be summarized by “Look a mission! And now we have Hollywood!”.

Today, as we talked about the Civil War (I wondered what battlegrounds we’d see, C pointed out we’d started traveling through historic sites since Tennessee, he’d even pointed out Shiloh as we passed. When he did so, I thought of beagles. See?)… Where was I? Oh, C and I talked about the Civil War and he said Washington DC was awfully far south to be the capital of the north, less than ten miles from Civil War battles. He speculated on how far north the Confederacy reached. With no help from me, he came up with Gettysburg.

Oh! I’ve heard of Gettysburg! Big, awful battle, that was a turning point of the war (in favor of the Union) And the Lincoln spoke after, “Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth…”.

Looking it up on on Wikipedia, the battle lasted for three days and 50,000 died. Jeez, that is a lot of dead young men. And the speech happened months later, commemirating the dead.

Being here, where things happened, makes me curious, it makes me go to Wikipedia and pick up books on history. I suspect I’ll learn more on this trip that in AP American History senior year in high school. And it will stick because I’m interested this time.

After we finished the Wordy Shipmates audio book, we started the sci fi adventure Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. It is a love poem to the ’80s and it is awesome. We’ ve both already read it but the audio version is just perfect as it is read by Wil Wheaton. Anyway, in the book, much of the time is spent in virtual reality. The narrator talks of going to school where astronomy is taught in holodeck-like simulations. One of the example included astronomy lessons taught on then moons of Jupiter.

That sort of immersion is the holy grail of education. I’m not the only one who learns best when curiosity is the motivating factor (instead of exams).

Right now, I’m excited about American history and geography. Because I’m here, where I can attach the physical world to new information.