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College professors are going back to paper exams and handwritten essays to fight students using ChatGPT
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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While I do agree with your initial point (that memorization is not really the way to go with education, I've hated it for all my life because it was never a true filter - a parrot could pass university level tests if trained well enough), I will answer your first point there and say that yes, it is important to know where Yugoslavia was, because politics was always first and foremost influenced by geography, and not just recent.
Without discussing the event mentioned itself, some points to consider:
The cultural distribution of people - influenced by geography - people on the same side of the mountain or river are more likely to share the same culture for example. Also were there places easily. Were they lands easily accessible to conquering armies and full of resources? Have some genocide and replacement with colonizers from the empire - and the pockets of 'natives' left start harboring animosity towards the new people.
Spheres of influence throughout history - arguably the most important factor - that area of Europe has usually been hammered by its more powerful neighbours, with nations not posessing adequate diplomacy or tactics being absorbed or into or heavily influenced by whatever empire was strongest at the time - Ottoman Empire, USSR, Roman Empire if we want to go that far into history. So I would say hearing 'Yugoslavia was in South East Europe' would immediately prompt an almost instinctual question of 'Oh, what terrible things happened there throughout history, then?' for one familiar with that area, thereby raising this little tidbit to one of the top facts.
We could then raise the question of what would have happened to the people had they been somewhere else? History is written by the victors and the nasty bits (like sabotage and propaganda to prevent a certain geographically nation from becoming too powerful) are left out.
My geopolitics game isn't that strong but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if the Swiss weren't in the place they are, they would probably not be the way they are (no negative nuance intended). Living in a place that's hard to invade tends to shape people differently than constantly looking over your shoulder.
And reading your second point, I'm understanding about what I wrote in this wall of text. Odd.
Yea ... we're on the same page here (I think). All the things you're talking about are the important stuff, IMO. "Yugoslavia is in south eastern Europe" doesn't mean much, even if you can guess something about the relatively obvious implications of that geography, as you say. But those implications come from somewhere, some understanding of some other episode of history. Or it could come form learning about Yugoslavia's and the Balkan's history. For instance, you might note from the location this it's relatively close to Turkey, but that wouldn't lead you to naturally expect a sizeable Islamic population in the region (well I didn't at first), unless you really knew the Ottoman history too. So there's a whole story to learn there of the particular cultural make up of the place and where it comes from and how that leads to cultural tensions come the Yugoslavian wars. In learning about that, you can learn about how far away the Ottoman empire was and where its borders got to over time, where the USSR was and the general ambit of Slavic culture etc. Once you've a got a story to tell, those things become naturally important and memorable.
And now I've added my own wall of text ... sorry. So ... yes! I agree! Both of our walls of texts are (loosely) about the important stuff, with facts sure, but motivated by and situated in history (though there's obviously a fuzzy line there too!)