The statement "History is only names and dates" is always hard one for historians, professional or not, to hear. This statement usually comes from people who often didn't have the best history teacher(s) during their school days. As a result, these people don't often like history because of their experiences with not-so-great history teachers.
When I hear the comment "History is only names and dates," a small part of me wants to be sarcastic and respond with "So we're just names and dates?" But that's not what this post is about.
Hopefully, this post acts as a lifeline to fellow historians. I also hope that this post also acts as an invitation to people who don't like history to give the subject another chance.
As I said above, people tend to not like history because of the history teachers they've had. Most of the time, history teachers - usually only through high school - stress only names and dates. This naturally results in students thinking that history is solely names and dates.
As a historian, I am here to say that history is not just names and dates. History is a story. It's the story of the earth, of humans, and of human time on the planet. If you have a history teacher emphasizing only the names and dates, they're teaching history wrong. Plain and simple.
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