I would say it's also similar with other subjects, like history, which focus SO MUCH in memorizing dates and names, instead of actually understanding why things were happening.
It sucks, but you really do need to know a lot of whens to help you contextualize the why. I've got a BA and MA in history and my first year at university was spend memorizing so many things, which was the absolute worst. But it did really does help a lot once you start doing your own research.
(and I think of computer makefiles - you don't need to know times, you just need to know what depended on what, and what things combine to cause something)
> It sucks, but you really do need to know a lot of whens to help you contextualize the why.
I always managed to memorize those dates in high school and elementary school. And then I promptly forgot them after test. I blamed my bad memory, but later when I learn how human memory works, I started to blame the way they taught us. People remember stories and systems well. Our memory works on relationships between facts. Most people sux at remembering unrelated arbitrary numbers.
All that done to me was that I seen history as boring pointless class. Historical characters came across as somewhat inhuman, absurd unrealistical creatures. Their behavior made no sense. Yes, they were actual real people, but the way history was taught made them sound like badly written characters from mediocre fiction.
It was only after I started to read history that was focused more on context, motivations and reasons I both starterd to long-term rememeber times+places and also like it.
No you cant. Because at that point, you know nothing about the other events you are supposed to locate and have no reason to care.
> You can then situate the evolution of distant lines of events without needing to memorize too many dependency graphs.
I am not even sure what that is supposed to mean in the context of high school history. You drew events you know about into lines or graph and still know nothing about how they relate to each other.
Understanding that A happened, which led to B happening later on is what matters. Having a ballpark is good for most things. Or do you still remember the exact dates you memorized on your history classes?
"Evidence" that memorizing dates don't work: no one remembers crap from their history classes.
Edit: > If you think he conquered Gaul after becoming dictator your entire narrative changes.
That's the whole point. You only need to know the order of the events. Do you know the exact date and time when he became officially a dictator?
I think after you've seen human nature, chaos and conflict, and how people get along, it gets more interesting.
How did people with no fast communication or transportation manage to fashion constitutions or governments that have lasted hundreds of years?