I fully agree with Oracle. The complete over-emphasis on dates was a huge turn off for me ever giving a damn about it. It was my least favorite subject in school, and as I grew distaste for it, so did my level of apathy towards how well I performed or prepared in the class.

The merit of history should be what can be learned from the successes and mistakes of nations and leaders of the past. I've spent nearly 10 minutes trying to write this post and tell you about all the boring useless things I had to study during my Sophomore and Junior year of high school and I can't simply because of just how bland it all was. If they just had said "Hey, here's ____ civilization, they were around in ___ time period, they were successful because they tried this stuff with their social rules, policies, laws, etc and they ultimately failed ___ many years later because they didn't have _____. This is why we, ____, decided to place special emphasis on ____ to not repeat what they fucked up." If I had just gotten a lot of that, I'd know a lot more about what political party I should be affiliated with, what's wrong with certain policies my government tries to push forward (and or what's right and should be appreciated), and I'd be an informed citizen with a decent understanding of social science.

I couldn't care less about what year a bill was signed, and if I have a child I sincerely hope his time isn't wasted studying these types of things when he or she could be learning more valuable lessons.