Context of History: The Destructive Use of the Timeline

Everyone who ever took history in third grade knows about the timeline. It is the thirteen pieces of construction paper we taped together and used our rulers to draw a very straight (okay, not so straight during the year 1100) line from one end to the other. In my school, we taped our timelines to the wall so we could see the unbroken stream of history from the year zero, to the year zero A.D., and to our very own year (1997 for me). It was a very handy little thing often appealed to by our teachers for reference. Oh, but it would wreak a terrible vengeance in years to come.
The argument is often made that we, right now, are living history. If we go back in our memories to January 20th, 2009, we are better able to understand this saying. On that day, current President Barack Obama was sworn in as America’s 44th president. Momentous, to be sure, and deserving of a very special place on our timeline. But what else happened on that day?
In sports news: Pacers 81, Spurs 99; Virginia Cavaliers 78, Maryland Terrapins 84
In International news: Stanislav Y. Merkelov, a rights lawyer in Moscow, was assassinated in broad daylight along with Anastasia Baburova, a journalist. An Australian novelist, Harry Nicolaides, was sentenced to three years in prison for insulting the Thai monarchy in a self-published novel, which reportedly sold fewer than a dozen copies. Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko of Ukraine and Russia signed a deal in their dispute over the price of natural gas and the terms of its transit across Ukraine to Europe, and said they would quickly resume shipments of fuel to freezing homes and idled factories.
In Business news: Small home builders are weighed down by billions in loans taken out during a favorable market. As banks -- during a crisis of their own -- foreclose on these loans, as many as 50 percent of small home builders are expected to fail. Cisco makes most of its profit -- $40 billion a year -- through its networking equipment. But Cisco's planned release of a server computer with sophisticated virtualization software could change the technology industry and put the company in competition with traditional partners.
In Arts news: ''Passing Strange,'' an offbeat tale of a black musician's coming of age, was well-received by critics before its Broadway run ended last year. Spike Lee was one of its many admirers; he liked it so much he wanted to adapt the musical to film. The film is now being screened at the Sundance Film Festival, which is unfamiliar territory for both Mr. Lee and the playwright, Stew.
In Science news: Once, most pills consumed in the United States were made in the United States. Now, most drug plants have moved to Asia because labor, construction, regulatory and environmental costs are lower there. Lawmakers and pharmaceutical experts are growing more and more worried that the nation is too reliant on medicine from abroad, and they are calling for a law that would require some drugs be made or stockpiled in the United States. With the new president's apparent enthusiasm for science, and the rise of ''geek chic,'' many scientists say now is the time to tackle a chronic problem in their enterprise: a dearth of women in the field. The seemingly insatiable appetite for live reef fish across Southeast Asia -- and increasingly in mainland China -- is devastating fish populations in a protected marine region around Indonesia, the Philippines and the Solomon Islands that is home to the world's richest ocean diversity, according to a recent report in the scientific journal Conservation Biology.
I think you get my point now.
All of these headlines (taken from NY Times) won’t show up on a timeline. Only Inauguration Day will truly be remembered. But which one of these headlines will be part of history long after we are dead? Which of these are we taking as news when the future will call them History?
This is the problem with the timeline method of teaching History. Students lose the interconnectedness of events. The line just does not show the overlap of events. This leads students to think that things happen sequentially, not in an amalgamated form. In the long run, they fail to recognize how something happening in politics relates in time to science or religion. It creates a compartmentalizing of time and subjects.
It has only been recently that I realized the negative influence of the timeline in my own student career. I was reading a book for fun last week on the Christian religion in context of culture (yes, fun is a relative term) when it hit me that all these events are interconnected. Things just don’t happen in a line, they happen like Tetris blocks. This was a cool revelation and one that started me thinking on this subject. Sure, I’d been raised with the timeline model of history. I’d “overcome” it as well. It had just taken me ten years to do so. So, how could this problem be fixed? How could other students be prevented from succumbing to the timeline model and its way of thinking about history?
Of course, it is always hard to know just what the student is getting at all. Some kids just understand things differently than others do and it isn’t a bad thing. You never know what is going to be the spark that leads to the outcome you want to see in them. But there are ways to “plant the seed.“ I remember some books I had read in grade school by a woman named Genevieve Foster. They were awesome books all with titles spanning many years of history, weaving together the different subjects that we all have to study in school. There is my personal favorite Augustus Caesar’s World: A Story of Ideas and Events from B.C. 44 to 14 A.D.. It shows the events of politics, science, medicine, exploration and religion in all the parts of the world known at that time. It takes the reader from Rome, to Judaea, to Gaul and even Britain. This book is the complete opposite of the timeline, giving its reader a sense of the interconnectedness of events in history.
Even if a student still doesn’t understand how it all comes together, their brain just might realize it better later on. At the very least, they won’t be completely taken over by the timeline way of thinking. Now, don’t get me wrong: the timeline isn’t a complete waste of time. It has its uses. Its just better to offer the Tetris block view of history along with it.

For more information on Genevieve Foster and her books, check out these links: http://www.lamppostpublishing.com/history_geneveive_foster.htm and http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=node%3D4&field-keywords=genevieve+foster&x=0&y=0