I always find interesting a new method of using History to teach useful tools and actually help people in their life. But often these new methods forget that History is two things : it is knowledge for most people, as such it is an important of anyone's culture. And it is a method for specialists.
Predictive History class is interesting, however there are some issues here : before university the teaching systems mostly have for goal to give everyone, equally, the same cultural basis, and not give critical thinking or any kind of rationality. For exemple Philosophy course are not in any way about learning to think philosophically, it is more an history of philosophy. As such schools generally follow these goals : give knowledge and understanding of basic knowledge and concepts aimed to make you a good citizen, human being and worker.
The issue now is that your idea ask young people to get logical and rational thinking and learn how to use them. And I'm all for it. Young people should learn this for sure. But now is it possible to really apply it on History ? I don't think so, generally speaking you are able to predict something base on the information you have, you see an event as believable because you are aware of the context and of the habits and tendencies of the participants. That's how you can determine if an event is plausible or not, and that's why Historians do it and not students, because to be able to do it and be right you need a good amount of knowledge around the event you are analysing.
I don't think even history students would be able to do it with the knowledge they already have. However there were already "active" ways of learning History in University, with students learning by themselves parts of History before producing a synthesis and present it to the others. In the History course we also study methodology and basically how to efficiently get to the truth, however it's a research methodology, you are not predicting events, you are wondering if an event is plausible or not, you are researching it because History is based on the search and use of proof.
So we now arrive at what is the biggest problem for me : History already has a methodology, his own logic, his own way to lead to the truth. This methodology already works quite well and you can use it on other scientific domain : being right is based on the proof you have to support your theory. To that you can add a constructive way of analysing History to reach conclusions and actually make it useful in any kind of human study. And that's where you can find some people trying to use History as a way to learn other logical thinking methods.
Now that I expressed my opinion on this, there is good points in my opinion : first its a very active way of learning History, one that truly make the student an actor of his learning and that's always a good thing, also it is aimed to help people improve their logical thinking and really think of actions and consequences, and of the continuity of History, that everything is linked. As such, it is a really good way to make students understand better History and the reality of the events. So on its own its already better than most of the traditional way of teaching History.
Finally, predictivity is actually very hard to apply to History, you can use this method as an activity in your course to diversify your methods and to keep your students curious and active. But in my opinion you can't have this instead of traditional learning since History is about knowledge, and culture, and already have a working method that already needs to be taughtand should be learned in schools way before university. Learning that truth needs to be supported by evidences and there is a logical methodology to go from discovery to building a theory, discussing it, and then reaching the truth. The method you are proposing make for a very good activity to help students emulate history, apply concepts already learned and to help them think logically. But the question is : would that time be more useful in basically applying the already existing method in this way ?
Make student do their research based on clues and information given by the teacher for the evaluation, then make the student separate plausible evidences from non plausible evidences and then, based on them present a theory about the event that state the event plausible or not, or if there is not enough hard evidence of the plausibility of said events (like coincidental evidences, second-hand testimony, etc ...). This exercise would force the student to learn his lessons, to seriously think about the method and how to apply it, which is useful in itself for many other domains than History. But it is an activity, an evaluation method, I don't think you could build a full class on this since you still need to learn a huge amount of knowledge to understand patterns, consequences, links and cultural differences an way of thinking, and you still need to teach the use of sources in research.
Conclusion : The research based on the collection of evidences, the importance of well used and collected sources, the scientific method based on theories that are discussed and debated. All of it is useful already but the common point is that you need to know a lot about the subject you are analysing to avoid getting false assumptions, or flawed one. However there is the possibility I didn't understand you well and gave you the words you didn't mean like that and since I find your idea interesting on itself. I would like to discuss it with you further.
PS : I'm sorry if my English is poor, I'm French and wants to use these occasions to improve my English discussing topics based on my work (as an Historan) and my interests (logical thinking, methods, etc ...). I'm also currently working on my teaching methods to find new ways to learn and use History in our modern day and age.
I always find interesting a new method of using History to teach useful tools and actually help people in their life. But often these new methods forget that History is two things : it is knowledge for most people, as such it is an important of anyone's culture. And it is a method for specialists.
Predictive History class is interesting, however there are some issues here : before university the teaching systems mostly have for goal to give everyone, equally, the same cultural basis, and not give critical thinking or any kind of rationality. For exemple Philosophy course are not in any way about learning to think philosophically, it is more an history of philosophy. As such schools generally follow these goals : give knowledge and understanding of basic knowledge and concepts aimed to make you a good citizen, human being and worker.
The issue now is that your idea ask young people to get logical and rational thinking and learn how to use them. And I'm all for it. Young people should learn this for sure. But now is it possible to really apply it on History ? I don't think so, generally speaking you are able to predict something base on the information you have, you see an event as believable because you are aware of the context and of the habits and tendencies of the participants. That's how you can determine if an event is plausible or not, and that's why Historians do it and not students, because to be able to do it and be right you need a good amount of knowledge around the event you are analysing.
I don't think even history students would be able to do it with the knowledge they already have. However there were already "active" ways of learning History in University, with students learning by themselves parts of History before producing a synthesis and present it to the others. In the History course we also study methodology and basically how to efficiently get to the truth, however it's a research methodology, you are not predicting events, you are wondering if an event is plausible or not, you are researching it because History is based on the search and use of proof.
So we now arrive at what is the biggest problem for me : History already has a methodology, his own logic, his own way to lead to the truth. This methodology already works quite well and you can use it on other scientific domain : being right is based on the proof you have to support your theory. To that you can add a constructive way of analysing History to reach conclusions and actually make it useful in any kind of human study. And that's where you can find some people trying to use History as a way to learn other logical thinking methods.
Now that I expressed my opinion on this, there is good points in my opinion : first its a very active way of learning History, one that truly make the student an actor of his learning and that's always a good thing, also it is aimed to help people improve their logical thinking and really think of actions and consequences, and of the continuity of History, that everything is linked. As such, it is a really good way to make students understand better History and the reality of the events. So on its own its already better than most of the traditional way of teaching History.
Finally, predictivity is actually very hard to apply to History, you can use this method as an activity in your course to diversify your methods and to keep your students curious and active. But in my opinion you can't have this instead of traditional learning since History is about knowledge, and culture, and already have a working method that already needs to be taughtand should be learned in schools way before university. Learning that truth needs to be supported by evidences and there is a logical methodology to go from discovery to building a theory, discussing it, and then reaching the truth. The method you are proposing make for a very good activity to help students emulate history, apply concepts already learned and to help them think logically. But the question is : would that time be more useful in basically applying the already existing method in this way ?
Make student do their research based on clues and information given by the teacher for the evaluation, then make the student separate plausible evidences from non plausible evidences and then, based on them present a theory about the event that state the event plausible or not, or if there is not enough hard evidence of the plausibility of said events (like coincidental evidences, second-hand testimony, etc ...). This exercise would force the student to learn his lessons, to seriously think about the method and how to apply it, which is useful in itself for many other domains than History. But it is an activity, an evaluation method, I don't think you could build a full class on this since you still need to learn a huge amount of knowledge to understand patterns, consequences, links and cultural differences an way of thinking, and you still need to teach the use of sources in research.
Conclusion : The research based on the collection of evidences, the importance of well used and collected sources, the scientific method based on theories that are discussed and debated. All of it is useful already but the common point is that you need to know a lot about the subject you are analysing to avoid getting false assumptions, or flawed one. However there is the possibility I didn't understand you well and gave you the words you didn't mean like that and since I find your idea interesting on itself. I would like to discuss it with you further.
PS : I'm sorry if my English is poor, I'm French and wants to use these occasions to improve my English discussing topics based on my work (as an Historan) and my interests (logical thinking, methods, etc ...). I'm also currently working on my teaching methods to find new ways to learn and use History in our modern day and age.