[mncharity]

> explaining other events and processes is left as an exercise to the reader

Does anyone know of any attempts at a "systems engineering" approach to teaching history?

So instead of a learning objective like "able to discuss the economic and political forces at work in the late Roman Empire", perhaps more like "has a feel for caloric restriction, starvation and famine in human history"? More human history as root causes analysis, than history as Trial Pursuit. And thus freed from the interminable obfuscating worry over just which particular measured mix of pervasive patterns of cause occurred in some trivially particular wherewhen. Fine for historians, but a distraction from introducing humanity as a system. More patterns of migration, than say Syrian migration in end Bronze Age collapse, or Mongols, or early 20th C, or early 21st, or etc. A more veterinary school approach to teaching history, focused on crosscutting patterns, because you've too many diverse critters to do old-style medical school's rote memorization of one critters's trivia. Any thoughts?