Disrecommendation: The Long 19th Century

[jducoeur]

I spend a lot of time enthusiastically recommending courses from The Teaching Company: I've got dozens of them, and have enjoyed most of them greatly. But in the interest of intellectual honesty, I should admit that they're not all great. Today's entry in the list sums it up:

The Long 19th Century: European History from 1789 to 1917 -- 18 CDs: IMO, the worst course I've bought from teachco. The teacher's style can best be described as unctuous, and the material is astonishingly badly-organized. (Especially if, from the sound of things, he's reading from deeply prepared notes.) He claims at the very beginning to not expect the student to know any background, and then immediately puts the lie to that -- the way jumps from topic to topic leaves me barely hanging on by my fingernails, and I do know at least a little about the subject. Gave up after 4 discs, because I found it too annoying and dull, and I have better things to spend my time on.

Quite disappointing -- I'm usually fond of their history courses, but decent organization does matter, especially for a history-survey course like this. It's possible that it improves further on, but I lost patience...

Comments

[aneirin-awenyd.livejournal.com]

Funny you should post this. I was just thinking about you yesterday. Do you have History of Music, and might we have the loan of it at some point?

[jducoeur]

Don't have it, I'm afraid -- so far, I've mainly been focusing on the ancient/medieval history and religion courses, and haven't touched music yet. (The full list of what I have can be found here. It's long, but still only a small fraction of their courses...)

[aneirin-awenyd.livejournal.com]

Ah, well. Thanks anyway! We have several VHS sets that we got for free from someone...History of English is one of them, but we have only made it through the first two of many parts. Long way to go. I think it's pretty interesting so far.

[dryfoo.livejournal.com]

Do they offer a money back guarantee? You're such a good customer, that kind of feedback should be gold to them.

I see their ads all the time, but I've never watched/listened to one of their courses. You make them sound pretty interesting.

[jducoeur]

In general, I quite like them: there's some variability, but most are above-average college courses. And since the lengths generally vary from 6 to 18 hours, they're usually pretty good at sizing the course to the topic, without too much padding. My full list, with capsule summaries, can be found here.

After the failure of The Long 19th Century, I've picked up Introduction to Judaism -- yes, despite my years at Brandeis I really don't know much about the subject. Much more fun, with a professor who is considerably more quirky and engaging. Anybody who can talk about "The great rabbi Joni Mitchell" while making a point about the Garden of Eden story has the sort of whimsy I can appreciate...