History, when I studied it in college, was a collection of opinions, claims of varying veracity, evidence of different strengths, lots of missing information, a

History, when I studied it in college, was a collection of opinions, claims of varying veracity, evidence of different strengths, lots of missing information, and attempts to find meaning in it all, usually from some current perspective. History professors these days are more often accused of postmodernism than narrative and more often of Marxism than national propaganda. Those electives in college are supposed to expose people to things like that. There is something very unlike that taught before college in the US that's more about memorizing than understanding. It's a similar situation to how the math that people have phobias about doesn't resemble undergrad math major math at all.