Later On

I just finished watching the BBC miniseries Monarchy (Series 1 and Series 2), available on Netflix Watch Instantly and highly recommended.

In looking at it purely as an educational experience, it is exhilaratingly effective: I know the overall succession of the English rulers (only through the Restoration, darn it—I certainly hope Series 3 will soon become available) in a “solid” way: able to move through it backward and forward, some feeling for the personalities and issues, and so on: the knowledge has emotional overtones and memories of scenes, persons, and music. I feel as though I will not only remember the knowledge thus gained, it also gives me a framework for further knowledge acquisition. Indeed, I am now eager to read some English history since as I read whatever it is, I’ll have a sense of context and more or less know where I am, historically. And now I can get on with the Shakespeare Project by beginning with the Histories, some of which are now luminous with possibility.

And how do they accomplish this? They use costume, actors, action, and music to tune in the emotional part of the learning experience and get it involved—this provides the oomph to drive it into long-term memory, in scientific terms. Then, as you watch the scenes and action, Dr. David Starkey’s stentorian tones are driving the facts deep into the prepared brain: when you remember the scene, you remember the facts he was reciting—you don’t quite hear the voice, but clearly that was the basis for the remembered facts, but which (in the process of our brain and its mechanisms) have now acquired the “roundness” of a solid connection via multiple pathways, including emotion and sense-memory.

So:

a. Make sure that all students get to see this early and often—maybe watching it every couple of years?

b. Speak up to demand similar “overview” series that give the viewer a basic framework of knowledge in other areas: science, for example, or mathematics, or painting…

Check out the series yourself to see what I mean.

UPDATE: BTW, I didn’t notice the depth of recall of the material I enjoyed until I started to explain why Queen Mary was called “Bloody Mary” and that whole story, beginning with Henry VIII’s will assigning the successive heirs… oops, I’m off again. But once you learn it this way, it all hangs together, rather than being disjoint facts.

UPDATE 2: Also, after viewing the series so far, I have a much better grasp of the appeal of a constitutional monarchy.