How we do the work
Our four-step process for learning everything
Everest is very engaged in learning history. She also has a fantastic memory. Engagement + Talent means I have pretty great “clay” to work with in my coaching. But learning “all of history” is very hard for anyone, let alone a 9-year old. I initially tried a bunch of stuff that did not work great (thank goodness she has patience with me as I figured this out). Some stuff that did not work:
Me lecturing to her
Watching engaging videos on history for kids and hoping she remembered stuff
Having her read books at her level about history (this actually does work for her, but it is nowhere near fast enough to get her the amount of content she needs to cover, leaves big gaps where there are no engaging books, and her retention is still not where it needs to be, and she still misses key facts she needs to know)
Leitner Boxes
Flash cards without context (i.e., fail the first few times through the cards, and slowing internalize the facts)
At one point I was taking her through flashcards and I asked her “Which president fought in the Spanish American War”. She said “Lyndon B Johnson”.
That was clearly wrong. But what was interesting was WHY it was wrong. She didn’t say a random person, she said a random president. Why?
The problem was she had been learning “facts” about a targeted list of people and events (people and events that will be featured in the “Red Regionals” of the History Bee). Both Teddy Roosevelt and Lyndon B Johnson are on that list (as is President George Bush Senior). When the question mentioned a president she had a pretty good idea it would be one of those three and she just threw one out there as a guess. She had not internalized that Teddy Roosevelt was active in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Lyndon B Johnson was associated with the 1960s, and George Bush was active in the 1980s and 90s.
She was learning history without the overall scaffolding that most adults have picked up over their lifetime. It was clear we had to speed-run learning the big picture.
Big History
My next plan involved building out a full history of humanity — starting with the earliest civilizations around 3000 BCE and ending with the 21st century. I used Wikipedia to pull out the most important events (and some people) for all of human history — just enough that she could get a picture of the history of the world and who and what fits where.
The final document was still about ten pages long, single spaced. I took her through it, and maybe it helped. It is unclear how much she really retained from my lecture. But at least she had a little grounding. We still need to do this better.
Our next step on Big History is going to be building a timeline in her room (actually two timelines: Modern History from ~1700 or 1600 to present — ~300-400 years, and Earlier History ~800 BC-1700 CE — ~2500 years. The Modern line will have more space on each individual decade. A lot more happened that she needs to remember from 1960-1970 CE than the 540-530 BCE). We will build the timeline together and then use sticky notes to add all the people and events she is focusing on. (I got this idea from The Lost Tools of Learning, but modified it to focus on the type of history likely to come up in the Bee)
Expect another post on this once we have the timeline built.
Targeted History
There are about 40-50 events/place/people she needs to know for the regional preliminaries. Once she is past preliminaries the questions could be about anything, but we are starting with the focused preliminaries list. There are two ways to think about being able to answer History Bee questions. To understand what those ways are it is important to understand how the History Bee questions are structured.
The questions are all built “pyramid style”. It means they start with obscure facts about the subject, and eventually get more and more obvious, until the last sentence “gives it away” for anyone who knows anything about the subject at all. Here is an example. See how fast you can get to the right response (don’t cheat and look ahead. You will know the answer after the last sentence of the question, if not before):
This man’s forces annihilated a coalition of Slavic princes at the Battle of the Kalka River, but his campaign against the Western Xia dynasty was incomplete due to his death. This ruler had an ally named Jamukha but eventually turned against him and had him killed. His empire’s legal code was known as the Yassa, and his armies employed innovative military tactics, including feigned retreats. This leader dispatched envoys to the Khwarezmian Empire, only to see them executed, sparking a devastating invasion. Born as Temujin, he united the Mongol tribes into a massive empire. For the point, name this founder of the Mongol Empire.
The answer is pretty clear in the last two sentences, but a lot harder at the beginning.
One has two choices when preparing for the National History Bee.
Learn the most basic thing about as many people and events as possible
Learn the ~5 most important things about each person or event (basically the stuff in bold above)
Someone who has mastered #1 could answer a lot of questions after the last sentence of the question. They avoid the problem of not being able to answer at all. But they are likely to be beaten by anyone who has used method #2 — the quizmaster may never get to the last sentence.
So what to do?
Initially my plan was to use method #2 for the targeted list that we knew was going to be featured at regionals, and then use method #1 for everything else — learn things like:
Newton invented the theory of gravity and calculus
Henry VIII had 6 wives and founded the Anglican church
9/11 resulted in the destruction of the Twin Towers by terrorists in airplanes
Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope
Basically one sentence or one flashcard per person, place or event. It was the efficient way to cover a lot of ground (and there is a lot of ground to cover - recall the 10 pages of notes on big history… I made a list of the “most essential” people and events to know, and after a lot of cutting to the bare minimum I still ended up with over 900 “things”), but there is a problem with the “bare minimum method” — it’s boring.
If you only know one fact about “everything”, you are just memorizing meaningless facts and words. So you know that Henry Clay was known as the “Great Compromiser”, but so what? What is the point of knowing that? What was he compromising? Why is Clay important to know at all?
The minimum viable product does not have a good answer for that.
So my current thinking is that there is really only ONE effective way to learn all of history — method #2.
How to Learn Five Things about Everything
Here is the latest plan for how to do that, step-by-step:
Everest watches a short video about the subject (~10 minutes)
I use ChatGPT to summarize the most important facts to know. I also get the AI to write a funny script about the event. I read Everest the AI script and we list off the key things to remember
We record a video where Everest teaches the audience the key things they need to know about the event. This is HARD. Even though she has, in theory, learned those things in three different ways, it is hard to remember them all, even in short term memory. Thankfully we can video edit so the final product looks good, but in the process she has worked her brain hard to internalize the facts
We add the facts to her Anki deck and review the deck every morning
That’s it. It seems to work. Right now it takes ~2 hours to get through about four “things” (including reviewing the flashcard reviews). I think we might be able to do it faster over time, but that is not bad as a starting point. If we are able to do it every day, five days/week for six months, she will have learned ~500 things. That is still shy of the 900 list I created, but because each “thing” is closer to five “things”, it punches above its weight.
For example:
After I made the list of 900 things I watched the National History Bee National Final (4th grade). I wanted to see if my 900 list covered all of the questions they asked. It did not. For example the answer to the very first question was “Robert McNamara” (the Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War). None of the kids at the National Finals got the question — even after the entire question was read to the final sentence. And while McNamara is interesting and important, he was not on my list of 900 — nor my longer list of 2000+. Its not surprising that even the best history 4th graders in the country did not know who he was. In my original plan for Everest — even if she had managed to know the “core fact” on the 900 things — she would not have known who McNamara was.
But…
In the new plan she had to learn about “The Vietnam War” (this was one of the events she learned last week, and its on the Reg Regionals short list). The Vietnam War is a pretty huge topic. But when I had AI give me the core facts she should learn for the History Bee we ended up with:
First war America decisively lost
Caused lots of turmoil domestically
The war was escalated by President Lyndon B Johnson, and its unpopularity contributed to his reelection loss
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave Johnson the power to escalate the war without further congressional approval
The last time the US had conscription
War was between the North and the South of Vietnam. The North was supported by China and the USSR and ruled by Ho Chi Minh
The three most important events to remember about the war are:
The Tonkin Incident
The Tet Offensive when the North instigated a massive coordinated attack on the south, that, while it failled militarily, turned much of the US public against the war
The Fall of Saigon when the US abandoned South Vietnam and there were dramatic escapes from the city while the North invaded
Other key things and people to know:
Agent Orange was a chemical weapon that was used in the war
Robert McNamara was Secretary of Defense during the war (the longest serving Secretary of Defense in US history). He used to work for for Ford Motor company and took his skills and operations and mathematical analysis to create “system analysis” in public policy and he applied those techniques to the war
Three award winning movies were made about the war that should be remembered: Apocalypse Now, Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket
And there he is. Robert McNamara is not learned about directly, but she learned the very basic facts about him as part of learning the ~10 key facts about the Vietnam War. And now she not only knows that he was the Secretary of State during Vietnam, she also learns a little bit about him and the context in which he was relevant. She did not go DEEP into McNamara or any of the other things, but she at least knows the name and what they are. The ONLY thing she could tell you about Ho Chi Men was that he led the North during the Vietnam War, but she now knows that cold. By using “Method #2” to learn about the Vietnam War, she picked up “Method #1” on at least 7-10 other things. All of the facts will end up in her Anki Cards (more on that later) and I am very confident she would be able to answer a question about McNamara in the competition. She would not be able to answer at the start of the question, but she should have no problem getting by the last sentence.
Here is the video of last year’s finals (the McNamara question is the first question). The early parts of the question talk about the documentary “Fog of War”, his time at Ford how he was a Whiz Kid at MIT, but then it ends with:
“Name this man who served as Secretary of Defense under both JFK and Lyndon Johnson?”
She can already correctly answer that question! No one else at the Nationals Finals last year could!
Now I need to figure out how to group those 900 things in such a way that they are learnable as collections of a smaller number of things.
The Everest Video
As always, I want to end with a video of Everest talking about this from her point of view. In this video Everest talks about the pyramid model of question design, and practices a few examples (this is from early in our preparation, long before I developed this new learning method):
I will continue to include one short, relevant, video from her Instagram with every post here, but we post to her Instagram daily and I will definitely not write that frequently here, so follow her there for all of her content.
Keep learning,
Edward (and Everest)
Very nice project! I hope you guys can keep it fun. The difficult stage is once the initial excitement wears off. All the best!