A history tutor: how to stop cramming dates

History is the subject most often learned the wrong way, and almost never through the learner's own fault. A child is told to learn the chapter, learns it, recites it, and a week later remembers nothing. A month after that it turns out last year has gone too.

It is not a memory problem. Dates and names on their own are simply attached to nothing.

What stays and what does not

What stays is what is held in place by cause. «In such a year, such a thing happened» does not stay. «There was no money in the treasury, so an assembly had to be called, and the assembly made demands of its own» does stay, because each part pulls the next along and the middle cannot be dropped.

A good history tutor rarely asks «when». They ask «why» and «what came of it». The dates settle in by themselves after that — like landmarks on a road you have already walked.

The exam asks for something other than it seems

Many people prepare as though they will have to retell the textbook. What is usually asked is different: compare, explain, make an argument and support it with a fact. Someone who knows every date and cannot reason scores below someone who knows half of them and can connect things.

Ask the tutor outright what the lessons will consist of. If the answer is «going over the topics», that is half the work. «Working through exam questions» and «learning to write an answer» should be in there too.

If you are in a different school system

History is taught differently from country to country more than any other subject. The same events look different, the emphasis falls elsewhere, the questions are put another way.

Tell the tutor which system you are in and what exam is ahead, and ask whether they have worked with it. Here it matters more than in maths: knowing the subject in general is no substitute for knowing what one particular system expects.

How to read the reviews here

The reviews here are thank-yous, so look for the detail rather than the verdict. «My son started telling us over dinner what he had learned» and «got her through the exam from nothing in a year» describe different people and different work.

See who is teaching history: history tutors with reviews.