History is one of the most fascinating subjects to study, and yet the relationship most students have with it amounts to the memorization of dates, names, places and brief summaries of events. Educators and students alike lament that history — for all its intrigue, destruction, beauty and oddity — simply becomes boring when taught in a classroom. This is one of the great failures of the modern educational model, and needs to be corrected to avoid the risk of one of the deepest fields of study becoming ingrained in students’ minds as not worth pursuing. One solution to this problem is for educators to present the emotions and humanity of past figures during their lectures as intrinsic to our understanding of history.

While the facts and figures of history are a vital part of understanding the subject, to know only the facts and figures is selling history frustratingly short. It is akin to knowing the SparkNotes summary of a famous classic while ignoring the moving prose and compelling characters that make it a classic. Many history students probably know about Catherine the Great’s expansion of the Russian Empire and that she failed to leave a competent heir to the throne in Paul I, her son. But what that understanding misses is Catherine’s deep-rooted paranoia about her son outlined in Henri Troyat’s book, “Catherine the Great,” a son who she saw not as her child but as a potential political rival. Her coldness would become a self-fulfilling prophecy — Paul began to idolize the father he never knew, the father Catherine herself usurped. This story is paramount to grasping a full understanding of Catherine and the facets of her life and accomplishments.

Similarly, most history students learn about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and how this killing set off a chain of events ultimately leading to the First World War. They may even know the details of the assassination: that it took place in Sarajevo on June 28th, 1914, at the hands of Gavrilo Princip. But who remembers the last words of the Archduke himself? Who remembers that, after being mortally wounded, his first instinct was to crawl towards his dying wife and say, “Sophie, Sophie! Don’t die! Live for our children!,” and that when a Lieutenant asked him if he was hurt he simply murmured “It’s nothing” over and over again, each time growing fainter until death took him and his wife. Franz Ferdinand and all other historical figures were human beings and understanding this helps flesh out how we perceive these events.

In the traditional classroom setting, these details would be considered periphery and undeserving of serious intellectual discussion. On the contrary, if we see historical figures as only names in a textbook, we forget that they were real flesh-and-blood people with fears and aspirations. Understanding their humanity can only enhance our understanding of the past.

Email Henry Cohen at [email protected]