Drastic changes in the way people do research..Lots of changes.

[malthaussen]

20. It should be taught in high school.

It should be taught as soon as the student attains the age of reason. Unfortunately, when I was in the public school system, "objective" tests were the norm: so history became a discipline of fact-gathering, and not much concern was paid to what was done with those facts after they were gathered. Some of my undergrad courses fell under the same spell. "Social Studies" teachers in that era thought they were doing their jobs if they could gin up a 10-question "true or false" quiz.

Facts may be foundational, but it is the structure built on that foundation that is interesting. But what am I saying? Nowadays, there are no "facts" at all, an interesting reaction to the concentration on facts which dominated an earlier generation.

Categorization, OTOH, seems to have replaced interpretation in the past generation. If one can define what category something fits in (or force something into a convenient category), then again, one has done his job. It's an interesting shorthand that assumes everyone defines the categories in the same way.

-- Mal