> It's parallel to what I've heard about the trouble with history bring. You just never know exactly where to start. Mathematics offers an opportunity here tha

> It's parallel to what I've heard about the trouble with history bring. You just never know exactly where to start. Mathematics offers an opportunity here that history doesn't: there is a definite starting point, namely, the axioms. Not every course can or should start at the axioms, but it is there as an option, as it isn't with history. Even so, this point is a very interesting one. I hated history in grade school, but then stumbled upon Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich while browsing the shelves one day. It hooked me, but made reference to a lot of WWI history that I didn't know, so I started reading about WWI history. But, to understand the antipathies in WWI, you have to go back even further in European history …. This hunt backwards for first causes has led me to Wilson's Heart of Europe, which traces the history of the Holy Roman Empire. It's a struggle, because it's much more on the scholarly than the popular side of things to which I am accustomed, but I'm engaged in it because it's helping me answer questions that I posed, rather than ones that my history teachers both posed and, all too soon, answered. I think that the best education, lies or no, is the one that both leaves students asking their own questions, and equips them with the tools to seek out the answers to those questions themselves.