Part of the reason a high school history course, or a math course, or whatever, is so boring for people who don't have a strong interest in them, is because the factory model of education, to which I referred above, categorizes knowledge into specific subject matter in order to rationalize the system so that it's easier to control. The reason you learned more history while acting is because you were approaching history in an interdisciplinary manner. Knowledge is not meant to be sliced up into bite-sized categories. This is also why playing games is such a successful way to learn just about anything. It's interdisciplinary. There shouldn't even be a term, "interdisciplinary". History should be learned in the context of language and geography and drama and music and math and so on. Geometry should be learned in the context of studying the ancient Greeks. Of course, that would be too hard to grade. So it won't get done - unless you're homeschooled.
The beauty of good fiction and fantasy, such as LotR, is that it presents the world whole rather than in pieces and categories. I honestly believe that people who learn this way, through imagination, as did Einstein, are better off than those who learn subject by subject by subject.
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