Discussion 1.1: History Experiences

Theme Synthesis — 35 Student Responses

HIST-1105-001 · Making History · Fall 2026

What Students Were Asked

  1. What frustrates you about history?
  2. Describe a time history was provocative or made you think differently about the present.
  3. Under what circumstances is / isn't history useful?
COMMON GROUND

#1 — "History Is Written By the Powerful"

The single largest theme — roughly 15+ of 35 students

The Core Complaint

  • Textbooks reflect the "winners'" perspective; marginalized voices are omitted
  • Physical evidence is destroyed or lost, not just biased
  • Curricula feel "curated" or "approved" rather than complete
  • Trust in history itself is eroding for some students

Standout Quotes

"We're taught about historical events... but only the parts that have been 'approved.'" — Hailey Krauskof
"Europeans mistranslated an Arabic text and started grinding up mummies... those mummies are lost forever." — Lillian Brucker
"Very few textbooks... mention the American concentration camps for Japanese-Americans... or the war crimes committed by the U.S. in Vietnam." — Jacob Hobart
COMMON GROUND

#2 — Frustration With *How* History Is Taught

~10+ students — distinct from #1: the subject isn't the problem, the pedagogy is

The Pattern

  • Rote memorization of names/dates over meaning and story
  • Repetition of the same shallow content year after year
  • Desire for creative, applied, or multimedia engagement
  • Several found their passion *despite* schooling, not because of it

Standout Quotes

"A story is what sticks... history is presented in a biased and unfair way; nonfiction is deemed uninteresting." — Grace Tomallo
"I feel like history shouldn't be a trivia... you should really want to understand what happened and why." — Michael Kern
"History can be found in art, music, film, culture... those can be just as interesting and meaningful ways of learning." — Gemma Smith
COMMON GROUND

#3 — Usefulness = "Avoid Repeating Mistakes"

Near-universal answer to Q3 (25+ students converge here)

"Without it, we as humans are doomed and determined to make the same mistakes forever." — Heather McCuistion
"History is a past guide... like touching a hot pan — you know the pain and won't do it again." — Caleb Brock
POCKET OF AGREEMENT

Notable Convergence: The Great Depression

Three students, independently, picked the same example for "history that reshaped how I see the present"

Dylan Ojeda: "Today whenever there's a recession... people look back at the Great Depression and think, what happens if the government does nothing?"

Caleb Brock: "I had no clue why the government was so involved in our lives... after learning about the Great Depression..."

Michael Kern: "You wonder if something like that could happen again... people today try to predict when and how it can repeat to make a profit."

POCKET OF AGREEMENT

Injustice & Oppression as the Default "Provocative Moment"

  • Holocaust/genocide: Cadence, Jacob, Sophia, Sarea — several link it directly to present-day denialism or rising hate
  • Civil rights / Black history: Emory, Cadence, Kaileb (via Roots), Madalyn
  • Indigenous displacement: Adam, Eveen, Christian (New Mexico specifically)
  • Women's rights: Victor (suffrage), Lillian (suffrage movement's exclusion of women of color)
CROSS-CUTTING THREAD

Present-Day Politics Bleeding Into Responses

Unprompted but recurring — students using the assignment to process current events

"The current administration's idea of removing people of an ethnicity... using exaggerated statistics... a glaring time this occurred in history was in Nazi Germany." — Jacob Hobart
"We seem to be reaching the same destination now in 2026" [re: 2008 housing crash] — Heather McCuistion
"The worst thing is having a president that is in favor of all of these things." — Sophia Rohr
OUTLIERS

Students Reporting No Frustration

Isaac, Serenity, Natalie, Kaileb, Estevan, Nolan (partial) — worth noting for engagement calibration

"I have had no frustration or quarrel with history! ... The most frustrating part of being a history major is that I hate writing papers, which is really UNM's fault." — Isaac Heider

Also Notable: Skepticism of the "Lessons of History" Cliché

"The human condition is constant, to progress at the fault of everything around them." — Grace Tomallo
"History isn't useful under the circumstances of preventing us from repeating the past... it's never exact... small differences... defer people from changing the path." — Hailey Krauskof
PARTICULARLY INTERESTING

Standout Individual Contributions

Unusual Examples & Framings

Lian Warner — The "Tiffany Problem": the name Tiffany dates to the 12th century, despite feeling modern. "How many things we see in our day-to-day life are actually way older than we imagine?"
Timothy Loosbrock — A historical reenactor since 2017; frustrated specifically by "Lost Cause" mythology: "like trying to teach a dog how to work a smartphone."
Grace Tomallo — Used Rasputin to explore how societies label the unexplainable as "witchcraft" vs. science.

Distrust-of-Sources Thread (Ties to Class Wikipedia Discussion)

Madalyn Rodriguez — Learns more from TikTok/Instagram than class, but knows it "can't be credible all the time with AI."
Caleb Brock — Recounts classmates attacking a teacher's primary-source evidence, killing classroom trust in history entirely.
Eveen Estrada Reyes — Compares historical "rewriting" to religious-text debates (Bible) over what counts as true.

Possible Discussion Seeds

  • Does history actually prevent repeated mistakes, or just feel like it should? (Grace & Hailey's pushback vs. the majority view)
  • Great Depression convergence — why does one event show up three times independently?
  • Is TikTok/social media a legitimate historical source? (Madalyn) — ties to the Wikipedia conversation already had in class
  • Whose "provocative moment" surprised you — and why does the class cluster so heavily around genocide/civil rights examples?

Summary

Strong consensus: history is incomplete/curated (theme 1) and poorly taught (theme 2), but still valuable for avoiding repeated mistakes (theme 3).

Interesting tension: a growing subset explicitly doubts whether "learning from history" actually works.

Political anxiety about the present is surfacing unprompted across many responses — a live thread worth naming directly in class.