The way I was taught history (in Australia), it could have used a whole lot more lists of facts and dates. Case in point: World War One. We spent weeks on that

The way I was taught history (in Australia), it could have used a whole lot more lists of facts and dates. Case in point: World War One. We spent weeks on that war. But we didn't learn how it started, or how it ended, or exactly who were the belligerents on both sides, or the key battles, or how it was eventually won. Instead we mostly sat around and read about how awful life was in the trenches for the soldiers -- surely important, but not at the expense of actually understanding the war. "It was a stalemate for years, and then we mysteriously won" sums up the picture of the war that we got.