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#Post#: 77--------------------------------------------------
Why Study History?
By: Mark4 Date: May 26, 2021, 11:12 am
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People live in the present. They plan for and worry about the
future. History, however, is the study of the past. Given all
the demands that press in from living in the present and
anticipating what is yet to come, why bother with what has been?
Given all the desirable and available branches of knowledge, why
insist—as most American educational programs do—on a good bit of
history? And why urge many students to study even more history
than they are required to?
Any subject of study needs justification: its advocates must
explain why it is worth attention. Most widely accepted
subjects—and history is certainly one of them—attract some
people who simply like the information and modes of thought
involved. But audiences less spontaneously drawn to the subject
and more doubtful about why to bother need to know what the
purpose is.
Historians do not perform heart transplants, improve highway
design, or arrest criminals. In a society that quite correctly
expects education to serve useful purposes, the functions of
history can seem more difficult to define than those of
engineering or medicine. History is in fact very useful,
actually indispensable, but the products of historical study are
less tangible, sometimes less immediate, than those that stem
from some other disciplines.
In the past history has been justified for reasons we would no
longer accept. For instance, one of the reasons history holds
its place in current education is because earlier leaders
believed that a knowledge of certain historical facts helped
distinguish the educated from the uneducated; the person who
could reel off the date of the Norman conquest of England (1066)
or the name of the person who came up with the theory of
evolution at about the same time that Darwin did (Wallace) was
deemed superior—a better candidate for law school or even a
business promotion. Knowledge of historical facts has been used
as a screening device in many societies, from China to the
United States, and the habit is still with us to some extent.
Unfortunately, this use can encourage mindless memorization—a
real but not very appealing aspect of the discipline. History
should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to
society, and because it harbors beauty. There are many ways to
discuss the real functions of the subject—as there are many
different historical talents and many different paths to
historical meaning. All definitions of history's utility,
however, rely on two fundamental facts.
History Helps Us Understand People and Societies
In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information
about how people and societies behave. Understanding the
operations of people and societies is difficult, though a number
of disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive reliance on
current data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we
evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical
materials? How can we understand genius, the influence of
technological innovation, or the role that beliefs play in
shaping family life, if we don't use what we know about
experiences in the past? Some social scientists attempt to
formulate laws or theories about human behavior. But even these
recourses depend on historical information, except for in
limited, often artificial cases in which experiments can be
devised to determine how people act. Major aspects of a
society's operation, like mass elections, missionary activities,
or military alliances, cannot be set up as precise experiments.
Consequently, history must serve, however imperfectly, as our
laboratory, and data from the past must serve as our most vital
evidence in the unavoidable quest to figure out why our complex
species behaves as it does in societal settings. This,
fundamentally, is why we cannot stay away from history: it
offers the only extensive evidential base for the contemplation
and analysis of how societies function, and people need to have
some sense of how societies function simply to run their own
lives.
History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live
in Came to Be
The second reason history is inescapable as a subject of serious
study follows closely on the first. The past causes the present,
and so the future. Any time we try to know why something
happened—whether a shift in political party dominance in the
American Congress, a major change in the teenage suicide rate,
or a war in the Balkans or the Middle East—we have to look for
factors that took shape earlier. Sometimes fairly recent history
will suffice to explain a major development, but often we need
to look further back to identify the causes of change. Only
through studying history can we grasp how things change; only
through history can we begin to comprehend the factors that
cause change; and only through history can we understand what
elements of an institution or a society persist despite change.
The Importance of History in Our Own Lives
These two fundamental reasons for studying history underlie more
specific and quite diverse uses of history in our own lives.
History well told is beautiful. Many of the historians who most
appeal to the general reading public know the importance of
dramatic and skillful writing—as well as of accuracy. Biography
and military history appeal in part because of the tales they
contain. History as art and entertainment serves a real purpose,
on aesthetic grounds but also on the level of human
understanding. Stories well done are stories that reveal how
people and societies have actually functioned, and they prompt
thoughts about the human experience in other times and places.
The same aesthetic and humanistic goals inspire people to
immerse themselves in efforts to reconstruct quite remote pasts,
far removed from immediate, present-day utility. Exploring what
historians sometimes call the "pastness of the past"—the ways
people in distant ages constructed their lives—involves a sense
of beauty and excitement, and ultimately another perspective on
human life and society.
History Contributes to Moral Understanding
History also provides a terrain for moral contemplation.
Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the past
allows a student of history to test his or her own moral sense,
to hone it against some of the real complexities individuals
have faced in difficult settings. People who have weathered
adversity not just in some work of fiction, but in real,
historical circumstances can provide inspiration. "History
teaching by example" is one phrase that describes this use of a
study of the past—a study not only of certifiable heroes, the
great men and women of history who successfully worked through
moral dilemmas, but also of more ordinary people who provide
lessons in courage, diligence, or constructive protest.
History Provides Identity
History also helps provide identity, and this is unquestionably
one of the reasons all modern nations encourage its teaching in
some form. Historical data include evidence about how families,
groups, institutions and whole countries were formed and about
how they have evolved while retaining cohesion. For many
Americans, studying the history of one's own family is the most
obvious use of history, for it provides facts about genealogy
and (at a slightly more complex level) a basis for understanding
how the family has interacted with larger historical change.
Family identity is established and confirmed. Many institutions,
businesses, communities, and social units, such as ethnic groups
in the United States, use history for similar identity purposes.
Merely defining the group in the present pales against the
possibility of forming an identity based on a rich past. And of
course nations use identity history as well—and sometimes abuse
it. Histories that tell the national story, emphasizing
distinctive features of the national experience, are meant to
drive home an understanding of national values and a commitment
to national loyalty.
Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship
A study of history is essential for good citizenship. This is
the most common justification for the place of history in school
curricula. Sometimes advocates of citizenship history hope
merely to promote national identity and loyalty through a
history spiced by vivid stories and lessons in individual
success and morality. But the importance of history for
citizenship goes beyond this narrow goal and can even challenge
it at some points.
History that lays the foundation for genuine citizenship
returns, in one sense, to the essential uses of the study of the
past. History provides data about the emergence of national
institutions, problems, and values—it's the only significant
storehouse of such data available. It offers evidence also about
how nations have interacted with other societies, providing
international and comparative perspectives essential for
responsible citizenship. Further, studying history helps us
understand how recent, current, and prospective changes that
affect the lives of citizens are emerging or may emerge and what
causes are involved. More important, studying history encourages
habits of mind that are vital for responsible public behavior,
whether as a national or community leader, an informed voter, a
petitioner, or a simple observer.
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