Is History Important ?

[AncientSpaceAeon]

Is just a simple thought. What do you think ?

[Pushkatu]

As long as we learn from it. :thumbsup:

[Vagrant0]

"Those who do not learn from history are forced to repeat it"

 

So, yes it is in the sense that without knowing about where we've been we can't make good decisions about where we are going or contemplate the failures and successes of those who have come before us.

 

If anything, history within the school system (America atleast) is/was just too watered down and essentially breaks down into Egypt -> Greece -> Rome (briefly) -> Some very basic stuff about Europe in the dark ages -> Renaissance (very briefly) -> American colonies (maybe some mention of other colonialism) -> Revolutionary War -> Louis and Clark / Louisiana Purchase -> Civil war -> reconstruction (even more briefly) -> Westward Expansion -> World War I (mostly just the Germany parts)-> Prohibition/The Great Depression -> World War II (mostly just the Europe and Northern Pacific parts)-> Civil Rights -> Korean war / Vietnam / Gulf War 1 / 9/11* / Gulf War 2* (much more briefly, and usually at the end of the year when nobody cares).

 

There might have been a few bits here and there between, but there wasn't much else that was really even covered, and sadly most of those who I graduated with couldn't even tell which of those happened in what order. But clearly, as some of those from other countries are probably shaking their head in disgust, there are a good many important things which aren't mentioned.

 

* not sure on these since was out of school by the time they happened, but doubt they're given much attention unless the teacher is a patriotic nutball or a question is asked. Granted schools have enough problems cramming as much material as they can into students, but there is just SOO MUCH overlap between grades 2 and 12 that pretty much everyone gets bored of the subject after 6th grade.

[madman132]

...and there is much to learn from History. Just about everything anyone is about to do now already has been done in a similar way. People acted and reacted in similar ways; History provides massive Spoilers :D

[myrmaad]

There's much more to history than what is taught in school. History can be found in books more often then textbooks.

 

Vagrant it's so funny you mention the order, that always ticked me off when I was a kid. We covered the Civil War in 4th grade, the Continental War in 5th, and didn't get around to World War 2 until 10th grade. It annoyed the crap out of me that it was thrown at us in a mish mash of disjointed pieces instead of in a linear big picture timeline. They could have simply added a big picture timeline to our subject matter and maybe that would have helped me feel better. As it was I found it disappointing at best.

 

My good friend who's been teaching since we graduated many years ago, tells me that I learn in an orderly linear fashion and that some students don't do well with that approach. I'll take her word for it.

 

As for the importance of history, both world history and personal history, I think it's so relevant that you discount it at your own peril.

 

(I have gotten a lot out of the my college history courses, but history is actually a passion of mine so I was in there mining for gold.)

Edited February 25, 2010 by myrmaad

[AncientSpaceAeon]

Maybe the history of our lives, but maybe not the history of the entire world.

[Vagrant0]

Maybe the history of our lives, but maybe not the history of the entire world.

Nope... history of the ENTIRE world as well. Economists have been handling the current depression based on mistakes made during the previous one... Which is why for the most part it was not nearly as bad (soup lines, controversial make-work programs (TVA), mass suicides). There's many other instances as well but I figure I'll leave that to the history buffs to handle. But a brief list:

Eugenics

Farmers Almanac (reason for being)

Sun Tsu - modern warfare/business

Cold war politics (vietnam, bay of pigs) - War on terror

Articles of Confederation - Constitution

Bank of America in the 1800s - the current economic situation

 

 

The world does not exist as one moment separate from others, there is always precedence or similarity.

[slygothmog]

As Myrmaad and vagrant0 say, both world history and personal history are important, but like most things you read you need to be carefull as history can be biased ( it's the winners who write the history books, not the losers ) or just plain wrong.

for many years we were taught that it was Christopher Columbus who discoverd America and it wasn't till i left school and became interested in the norse sagas that i discoverd it was in fact Lief Ericson - and only then after a tip off from another norse sailor.

I am reading the Historys of Herodotus at the moment mostly because how people lived in ancient times facinates me and must remember not to accept the events in his book as gospel truth. He is human with his own viewpoints and this will lead him to present things from those viewpoints. However he is credited with being impartial so i have no reason to discount any of the events he wrote about either.

[desperado2008]

Tutta la storia e' contemporanea---Benedetto Croce

translation:"all history is contemporary."

[bben46]

Yes, history is watered down in school. Mainly because there is so much of it. And it is always biased, even though the history of conflict is mostly written by the winners, even those parts that do get written by losers are biased because that is how the author saw it.

 

@slygothmog. Even there you are showing bias. There is evidence that fishermen from Europe were making temporary camps in Newfoundland even before the Norse, and speculation based on some old Chinese writings that the Chinese even had an earlier expedition to the US West coast. But even further back, the American Indians (now called indigenous peoples) 'discovered' America, not once but many times in different waves of explorers and settlers.

 

There is much to learn from history. Not all good. A lot of bad is covered up by time, propaganda and neglect. Nobody wants to remember the bad stuff that happened to them. And everyone wants to remember the glorious past as glorious.

 

One of my big gripes is trying to put today's morality and thought patterns on people of a different time instead of trying to understand that what they were doing was normal to them, and 'just the way things are'.

 

Like Vagrant said, you didn't learn history in school. Just a few dates and highlights that some educator thought were relevant.