I’ve been trying to learn more about history to better understand the future¹. Seeing as there’s so much to learn, naturally, I was using YouTube for some of it. But that’s when I noticed something quite odd:

Channels such as “Mr. Beat” or “CrashCourse” spend so much time trying to “make history fun” that it just makes it more confusing. Instead of a simple “here is X, it does Y” (which you can definitely spruce up with some stories), they opt for:

“Hey kids, look at me, I’m playing a silly character. I’m gonna ‘teach’ you some history because I’m one of those weird history nerds!”

This attitude, although being quite odd, aligns with what I saw while working at a school. There is a whole underlying attitude of “learning is dumb, but if we don’t pass theses tests I don’t make money”. When in reality, learning is just inherently interesting.

It would probably be for the best if we didn’t indoctrinate children to dislike learning. If you are making content on history or any other educational subject, don’t lead off with “we are gonna learn, like a bunch of nerds”. Just teach the subject matter. If the students want to disparage the content afterwards, that’s their decision. You don’t need to preemptively disparage it for them. Elsewise, the students are ingesting the message of “even the adults think this is weird/cringe/nerd stuff”, and internalizing the message: “learning is dumb”.

This is perhaps the reason why the PBS documentaries are so good. They take the subject matter, and therefor themselves, seriously. Not being diminutive of learning as a concept.