Why study or read history?

There has been some discussion as to what constitutes history and if one can learn from it. Some people have said history has no meaning or lessons.

If we can't learn from it maybe it should be eliminated from the schools, and if so at what level should we start eliminating it?

A number of schools do find history worth their time, and that raises the question- why it is they invest time and money in learning about the past if it is not worth while?

See below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_University

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_War_College

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Advanced_Military_Studies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_War_College

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_University

Schools? They all look like military institutions.

Most schools don't actually teach history anyway (too controversial); they teach rote memorization. It isn't till you get to college (sometimes) that you're taught the 'how' and 'why' of the dates and names you memorized.

I am very interested in this topic, having a strong sense, not yet proven, that the study of history among American students has been in decline for decades and is considered now to be a sideline subject, not essential to a persons overall education and fitness for their life and career. I believe the opposite, thinking that the study of history engages all of the most critical thinking and rhetorical skills most needed in today's world.
But alas it is not to be. I don't think we can depend on public education for a solid grounding in history. The culture has moved in another direction and today's parents are more focused in other areas of their children's education. By the way, whatever happened to the study of civics ? Did it go the way of Latin?
Perhaps we Americans need a new source of historical knowledge and insight. Am seeking answers to this question as I ponder my 6 year old grandsons future education.

I think a basic grounding in history and geography is essential for any well-informed person. These subjects won't help you get a job (except as a history or geography teacher) but they will help you understand world events, and give you perspective in many different areas. Economists neglected to study the history of economics for decades, but now they are beginning to realize the value of history in understanding current macroeconomic problems. In politics, philosophy and many other fields it is essential to place things in historical context. How can you approach the Israel-Palestine debate without reference to history? Or any conflict?

In terms of 'usefulness' of a subject, why is high school math considered the most useful and practical? Most people will never, ever use trigonometry or calculus, or even algebra, after they graduate. I know I haven't needed it. But as an English teacher I draw every single day to communicate ideas. So why is math more 'practical' than art?

I use my knowledge of history everyday when reading the news, or travelling, or talking to friends from other countries, or reading literature from previous centuries. Never have I said, "Oh, I wish I could remember the trigonometry I learned in Grade 10."

>6 madpoet:, two thumbs up! If math class had placed more focus on how to manage my household budget someday, that might have been a different story.

You can generally tell who slept through history class as a kid. I can't often guess who did or didn't in math.

>7 Cecrow: If math class had placed more focus on how to manage my household budget someday, that might have been a different story.


You should have taken Home Economics in school instead of Shop class. :-)

I think the study of history -- the attempt to understand the past -- has an obligation to be as objective as possible in order to be as accurate as possible. But our history informs our cultural identity and thus always has meaning for us here in the present -- we just have to remember that we impose our contemporary sense of ourselves on history when we invest moments in the past with special significance.

I am thinking back to my OP and the many military institutions in our country. It is well known that no military leader wants to be caught fighting a battle with tactics, etc. of the last battle. In effect one would think that if any institution needed to get the history right it would be the military.

One US military man, now retired, who I think gets it right, teaches history, writes, and does much more is:

Colonel Andrew Bacevich

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Bacevich

I have read his books and corresponded with him and I believe he is not only brilliant but is the real thing.

four epigrams:
"those who fail to learn from their history are doomed to repeat it." -Santayana
"Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature."
David Hume
"Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them (the incidents of history) as wrongs to be avenged."
Abraham Lincoln
"If you are not interested in history remember that history is interested in YOU!" And I can't find a source for that last quote.

In Australia we seem to be enjoying a (probably temporary) abatement of "The History Wars" in which right wing conservatives sought to control the national history curriculum. They have a particular interest in denying the wrongs suffered by Aborigines. The point of it all is that if you control people's view of the past you can control their view of the future.

I quite enjoyed history at school, especially in the last couple of years when I had a really good teacher. I had been a reader of historical novels since childhood, which helped. But I must say that in early secondary school I got a bit bored with constant revisiting of the three field system followed by Turnip Townsend. And I shared the general view the Australian history was boring, which was perfectly true of the way it was taught in those days.

James Loewen's book Lies my Teachers Told Me is a very good explanation of what's wrong with US history high school textbooks. Including how a small but vocal group can affect all textbooks. Publishers aren't going to print more than one version. It needs the widest possible approval for the publisher to make $ . So history becomes rote memorization rather than why and mistakes and controversies are ignored. So no one sees the point. Personally I love history and geography. I love maps. In my US history class Jr yr one had to fill in states on a U.S. map. On had to pass (35 states ) to pass class. Some kids had to take it 4 times. I got bored and added state capitals rivers mountain etc but sad that not only do they not know the world. They didn't know their own country!! Scary sad

Fortunately we only have six states and the Northern Territory!

Now that you mention it, I remember enjoying Geography, also because of a good teacher. I am grateful to her for the expression "native insouciance"; probably politically incorrect nowadays, but wonderful code for the whole "mad dogs and Englishmen" thing.

>10 DinadansFriend:
I believe Santayana also said -- "Read nothing but history and biography, for that is life without theory."

Excerpt:

On History (1908)

By Bertrand Russell

OF ALL THE studies by which men acquire citizenship of the intellectual commonwealth, no single one is so indispensable as the study of the past. To know how the world developed to the point at which our individual memory begins; how the religions, the institutions, the nations among which we live, became what they are; to be acquainted with the great of other times, with customs and beliefs differing widely from our own – these things are indispensable to any consciousness of our position, and to any emancipation from the accidental circumstances of our education. It is not only to the historian that history is valuable, not only to the professed student of archives and documents, but to all who are capable of a contemplative survey of human life. But the value of history is so multiform, that those to whom some one of its sides appeals with especial force are in constant danger of forgetting all the others.

*** ***

( Bertrand Russell, “On History,” The Independent Review : 3 (Jul 1904), pp. 207-215. )

http://www.schillerinstitute.org/transl/Schiller_essays/universal_history.html

https://harpers.org/blog/2007/07/what-is-and-to-what-end-do-we-study-history/