All human history is interconnected. Each person has their own life story, connected with stories from other lives whether directly or indirectly. No one can hop out of their life’s story and not influence the lives of others. The past affects the present, which also affects the future. Each person affects the course of their and others’ life events whether they like it or not, and this is how history is made, by people constantly influencing each other’s life stories.
A new teacher at BMC is trying to show how history can be seen this way and how people can learn from this. His name is Dr. Megelsh, and he has created two new classes here at BMC specifically for the purpose of showing how all history is interconnected. Each story or life event affects the ones after it or the ones surrounding it in history.
Dr. Megelsh said that he “went to Thomas Edison State University, then…to Liberty University, and then Auburn University” until he received a PhD in History. According to him, a friend and old mentor of his that helped with his graduate work, Steven Woodworth, actually recommended he come here because of Dr. Megelsh’s love for God and history. Steven Woodworth also mentioned to Dr. Megelsh that he might work well with another teacher here, Dr. Bennett, because they both liked many of the same things, had a mission and a desire to serve God, and wanted to teach students about God. Dr. Megelsh said that he is very strong in his faith.
Dr. Megelsh says that he teaches his history classes here with storytelling, and quite enjoys doing so. He says that he will tell one story of history per class and then maybe give the students a short prelude of the next one in order to advise them what to watch out for. He tells the stories in chronological order so that the class can see how all events in history are interconnected.
That is actually his idea with the two new classes that he has invented this semester to teach, one on World Wars 1 and 2 to show how World War 1 led up to World War 2 and one on piracy’s history. The two classes are respectively called “WWI and WW2” and “The History of Piracy.” The latter class is to be taught in Spring 2023 and the former is waiting on a specific release date confirmation.The aim of all these classes is, once again, to show how each event in history is interconnected and influences the ones after it.
Some other classes Dr. Megelsh teaches include Western Civilization 1, Early and Modern U.S. History, and American Military History. After each historical story in a history class, Dr. Megelsh will ask his students what the moral of this story is because “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” (George Santayana).
