These thoughts haven’t raced through my head since grade school.
I know this one.
Come on — I just learned this.
It’s on the tip of my tongue. Why can’t I remember?
I glance around the classroom. The Turkish students seem used to this. One’s muttering a mnemonic. Another’s writing, then erasing, then writing again, wearing through his test sheet with each pencil swipe.
My eyes catch with Cassie — one of the few other Americans studying at Koç Üniversitisi in Istanbul. Her face shows the same desperate confusion as mine.
“What the F?” she mouths. “Dates?” For a moment, we share a panicked unity. Then she turns her glance back to her paper. The professor paces by, checking on us like Mrs. Snyder would in second grade.
I lower my gaze back to my paper, returning my thoughts to Justinian. Or, more accurately, to his death. My problem? I don’t remember what year that was.
I could write a whole essay about Justinian the Great. I could discuss his myriad accomplishments. He rebuilt Constantinople after the Nika Riots burned the city down. He constructed the Hagia Sofia (Greek for “Church of Holy Wisdom”) and topped it with Christendom’s largest dome. He tried to rebuild Rome’s Empire, his soldiers even marching on Rome itself.
I could put a whole discourse together just on Justinian’s death. It ended what historians call “The Early Byzantine Period” or, as it’s more romantically known, “The Golden Age of Byzantium.” Scholarly debate still rages over why the Empire began its decline after Justinian’s death. Some historians say the Empire became too reliant on autocratic leadership, and that Justinian’s nephew, Justin II, couldn’t pick up the reigns. Others point to the huge debts Justinian racked up expanding the Empire, enlarging the army, and building things like the Hagia Sofia.
In other words, I know who Justinian is. I can explain why he matters. In an AU history exam, I’d be halfway through my blue book.
But there’s no blue book on my desk. There’s a single paper, with a single blank spot, and the professor’s admonishment to use “dates.” She’s even underlined the word. Twice.
I know this one.
Is it 563? 623? It’s definitely after 500 — he hasn’t taken the throne yet. And 650? The Hagia Sofia’s older than that, isn’t it? I’m getting closer.
I know this one.
But I don’t. I grimace, scrawling my answer:
“Justinian’s Death: c. 600”
A fine ballpark figure for a first-draft essay. But for this test? It’s not going to suffice. I mentally subtract two points from my possible score and move on.
A few days after my Istanbul history brain-freeze (and after I’ve Googled Justinian’s death — it’s 565, by the way) I have lunch with Hilal Eryilmaz, a chemistry student at Koç, as well as one of the school’s few scholarship students.
Eryilmaz has never understood why I study history. When we first met, I tried to explain history’s allure. The study of man’s inherent drama, the understanding of why things are the way they are — I told her I found these things fascinating. I couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t study history.
“That stuff is interesting,” she said. “But I don’t like remembering dates.”
At the time, I found the response incomprehensible. History was no longer about dates, I said. It was about social movements, understanding the development and impulses of man. The dates — even a lot of the names — were, by definition, trivial.
Now, with my first Koç history test behind me, Eyilmaz is reminding me that, in Turkey, history is still very much about dates.
“In Turkey, history classes ... are just facts,” she said. “If you want to think logically, critically ... that’s what calculus classes are for. Or science classes.”
Eyilmaz tells me that at universities like Koç, the intellectuals of academia — the critical thinkers, the brightest and best — aren’t studying the Humanities. Here, she says, they’re studying chemistry, biology, engineering or (I shudder) math.
However annoying this may be for me, it makes sense. Turkey is still a growing country. Its economy is still developing, its financial skyscrapers still being built.
When John Adams was visiting the French Court during the Revolution, he was criticized for being unable to intellectually discuss the “finer things” like music and art. He responded:
“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study ... navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music ... and porcelain.”
Intellectual study of history is in the second of those categories — maybe even the third. But math and science? Those are the things Turkey is learning now. No wonder that’s where the thinking students have flocked.
You can reach this columnist at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
