History 138:  Science in the U.S.

Some Reading Strategies for History Courses:
A List of Informal Suggestions
Facts and Dates History isn't just about learning facts and dates.  It's also about understanding how and why things happened.  So don't get bogged down in all the facts and dates, at the expense of the big picture.  Ask, "Why would this event be important, and how does it relate to other events?"  These questions give you the framework to hang your facts and dates on. This is not to say that you can forget all facts and dates, but it is to suggest remembering them within a meaningful context.
Information Overload History readings often give you more information than you actually need to remember.  Again, here the big picture is important.  Authors include details to make their cases more persuasive or memorable.  But on the same principle as above, not all these details need to be noted down and stored away.
Active Reading History courses have a lot of reading.  Therefore you need to practice active, intelligent reading.  Keep asking yourself, "What is the point of all this?  What am I supposed to be getting out of it?"  Then organize your reading around answering those questions.  It helps to scan material quickly before really getting into it;  it helps to look back over it afterwards to fix the main points in your mind.
Types of Sources History courses use different kinds of materials that demand different kinds of reading.  For instance, a narrative of someone's life may be quicker and easier to read than a historian's analysis of an event and its reasons.  A primary document will make you ask different questions from a textbook account.
Interpretation History is interpretive.  Historians (authors, people in general) will sometimes tell different stories about events or attribute different significance to them.  The accounts you have before you do not represent the final truth.  This does not mean, though, that history is bunk (to cite Henry Ford).  What these accounts represent are the efforts of (usually) intelligent, thoughtful people to make sense of what we can find out about what happened in the past.
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Copyright © Cathryn Carson 2002