Another day, another instance of intellectual bed-wetting by legacy media 'journalists': read and weep about the decay and decadence of Western 'elites'
Going by the quoted parts (gave up on Politico when they all got TDS in 2016 - analysing and criticising a candidate is one thing; doing it in a misleading and partisan way is another), this is history as read and understood by someone who only uses Wikipedia and lexicons as sources.
That bit about the assassination of the Arch-Duke and the aritllery... my my. The preceding twenty years had nothing to do with it, then. All it took was a serb with a gun.
He was probably tutored using the "clothes hanger"-method; memorise hard data-points to use as hangers for the real meat of the subject. Problem is, the way it was used in schools in the 70s and 80s (I too was tutored in school using that method) was that many teachers weren't able to produce the rich and vast swaths that makes up a comprehensive whole; all that is memorised are the data-points (the "lookupable facts" as my teacher called it, derisively) without any real understanding of the actual factors.
People tutored that way, unless they manage to utilise the method during higher studies, only know factoids and doesn't realise what's missing, and thus become fully capable of arguing - for real - that grand event X came about because of piddling detail Y. Like, the Roman Republic fell because Gaius Julius crossed the Rubicon... because there were no other factors involved, were there?
Oh, well, the quoted parts are perfectly sufficient, the entire piece by Karnitschnig is BS: virtue-signalling + arrogance + ignorance--what could go wrong?
Am I 'offended'? Well, no, but this hare-brained paper wouldn't be getting even an 'E', if that was one of 'my' students. Funny thing is, though, as far as the teaching methods are concerned, having grown up in roughly the same era of 'pedagogical attainment' (1980s and 1990s), the way of instruction you described is eerily familiar.
Now, would it be 'unfair' to criticise the teachers--and the professors at university who trained them--for this? Sure, even though it would be (partially) justifiable, rhetorically speaking, as well as anachronistic to certain extents.
That said, the problems involved are, in particular order, the main exhibits bedevilling our Western education systems: learn for the exam, nevermind understanding anything (believe me, the students getting the 'best' grades back then were like that: outstanding grades in school, little to show afterwards); add some in my opinion wrong generalities--and you've get standardised (PISA) testing, which doesn't say anything about either teaching or student learning (but is related to a cottage industry of private tutoring etc.).
As regards the piece in Politico, well, it's so bad that it's beyond anything; the reason I brought it up isn't (even) the historiography issue (although that's right down my professional alley, so to speak), but to illustrate how quickly US/Western elite media discourse shifted from celebrating Austria-Hungary (a position, while of course debatable, is supported by scholarship) to one making up wildly misleading statements for the sake of scoring a cheap shot. Sure, nothing new under the sun, but in this particular case, it is very much important as the Habsburg Empire has a long pedigree of being used as a cartoon-ish ancestor of the EU.
It just shows, again, that these people are either extremely dishonest or totally incompetent. Or both.
Going by the quoted parts (gave up on Politico when they all got TDS in 2016 - analysing and criticising a candidate is one thing; doing it in a misleading and partisan way is another), this is history as read and understood by someone who only uses Wikipedia and lexicons as sources.
That bit about the assassination of the Arch-Duke and the aritllery... my my. The preceding twenty years had nothing to do with it, then. All it took was a serb with a gun.
He was probably tutored using the "clothes hanger"-method; memorise hard data-points to use as hangers for the real meat of the subject. Problem is, the way it was used in schools in the 70s and 80s (I too was tutored in school using that method) was that many teachers weren't able to produce the rich and vast swaths that makes up a comprehensive whole; all that is memorised are the data-points (the "lookupable facts" as my teacher called it, derisively) without any real understanding of the actual factors.
People tutored that way, unless they manage to utilise the method during higher studies, only know factoids and doesn't realise what's missing, and thus become fully capable of arguing - for real - that grand event X came about because of piddling detail Y. Like, the Roman Republic fell because Gaius Julius crossed the Rubicon... because there were no other factors involved, were there?
Oh, well, the quoted parts are perfectly sufficient, the entire piece by Karnitschnig is BS: virtue-signalling + arrogance + ignorance--what could go wrong?
Am I 'offended'? Well, no, but this hare-brained paper wouldn't be getting even an 'E', if that was one of 'my' students. Funny thing is, though, as far as the teaching methods are concerned, having grown up in roughly the same era of 'pedagogical attainment' (1980s and 1990s), the way of instruction you described is eerily familiar.
Now, would it be 'unfair' to criticise the teachers--and the professors at university who trained them--for this? Sure, even though it would be (partially) justifiable, rhetorically speaking, as well as anachronistic to certain extents.
That said, the problems involved are, in particular order, the main exhibits bedevilling our Western education systems: learn for the exam, nevermind understanding anything (believe me, the students getting the 'best' grades back then were like that: outstanding grades in school, little to show afterwards); add some in my opinion wrong generalities--and you've get standardised (PISA) testing, which doesn't say anything about either teaching or student learning (but is related to a cottage industry of private tutoring etc.).
As regards the piece in Politico, well, it's so bad that it's beyond anything; the reason I brought it up isn't (even) the historiography issue (although that's right down my professional alley, so to speak), but to illustrate how quickly US/Western elite media discourse shifted from celebrating Austria-Hungary (a position, while of course debatable, is supported by scholarship) to one making up wildly misleading statements for the sake of scoring a cheap shot. Sure, nothing new under the sun, but in this particular case, it is very much important as the Habsburg Empire has a long pedigree of being used as a cartoon-ish ancestor of the EU.
It just shows, again, that these people are either extremely dishonest or totally incompetent. Or both.