How Important do you think history is?

Shaissa

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One of my college classmates wrote a paper on the falling understanding of history in today's age (basically he questioned people 30 to 18, about 100 people) He asked how important do you think History is on a scale 1-10 and then asked 10 basic US history questions than 5 World history questions, which when I did it I got them all right, and he noticed a trend that the younger the person was the less they actually knew about history, and he found out that here in the US at least you don't actually need a history class in high school and in fact most states only require history in the early years of middle school (6th or 7th grade for the US) which I found kind of shocking.

So I was curious how important personally do you think history is, and why do you think that?

Just a fun thing for the US and maybe world people

He said almost all people got more than half of these wrong

U.S. History Question
1. Who was the first president of the United States of America

2. Name the two sides of the American Civil War

3. Who were the two major powers in the French and Indian war (or the 7 year war)

4. when was the Declaration of Independence signed? (he actually accepted only the month and the day as acceptable answers and still many got that wrong)

5. Name the first European to come to America

6. Name the empire that originally ruled over the thirteen colonies.

7. Name one of the original thirteen colonies

8. name another European country that had a claim in the United States other than the one you named in answer 6

9. Name the first president to be assassinated in office

10. Name the president that was in office when the Berlin Wall fell.


then the 5 world history questions

1. Name two countries involved in both World War I and World War II

2. Name the country that Christopher Columbus sailed under.

3. Name two countries that colonized Africa

4. Name one country that colonized a Middle Eastern country

5. Name one country that is in both Europe and Asia. (geography question but I think people would know.)
 
If we do not learn from the past, we are more bound to repeat it. Knowing past history facts like you mentioned don't hold as much weight in my eyes as knowing or not knowing of the wrong doings of the past. We should also look at history and see what things WERE done correctly, and try to incorporate that in our world today. Two of those things would be a sense of honor/honesty and a good work ethnic; both of which I feel are on the decline in the US and will only continue to be that way as time goes by.
 
If we do not learn from the past, we are more bound to repeat it. Knowing past history facts like you mentioned don't hold as much weight in my eyes as knowing or not knowing of the wrong doings of the past. We should also look at history and see what things WERE done correctly, and try to incorporate that in our world today. Two of those things would be a sense of honor/honesty and a good work ethnic; both of which I feel are on the decline in the US and will only continue to be that way as time goes by.

This. While I don't think dates and such are important, I do think time periods are important. Getting people to understand what other things were happening at the same time gives context that can really help cement a balanced view of the world in your mind. For example, I was probably fourteen or fifteen before I finally made the connection for how recent the Civil Rights Movement stuff was. Until then, it felt like it might as well have been ten lifetimes ago. But even my parents were alive toward the end of the more major parts of that era. I had that disconnect entirely because I was raised in an area, and an environment where there was no major problem with racism. So it gave me the impression that such issues were long behind us.

I would also say that history is a great place to look for inspiration. The Pyramids are not the only thing that are mind-blowing human creations from a time when such a creation should've been impossible. There have been so many advancements in both knowledge and invention that are absolutely amazing for their time. Not only does teaching such stuff make learning about other parts of history more interesting, but it's a really great motivator for doing your own great things.
 
I think that understanding the context for our own existence is very important.

Sometimes the history which is taught in schools can be shockingly limited, and people don’t have a decent understanding of the contexts of the individual periods which they study in relation to the wider context of world history. People sometimes think of ‘The Tudors’, ‘The Victorians’, ‘The Ancient Greeks’ (which itself really covers multiple centuries, although people generally mean Classical Athens when they mean Ancient Greek), and any other period of history as isolated pockets of history. These are considered as neat and self-contained moments each with their own distinct characters, like zones in a video game, or areas in a theme park. The real world doesn’t work like that though. We can create caricatures of periods, but history flows like a river. It doesn’t divide itself up into neat blocks – we do that in order to describe them, and we sometimes need to undo or be conscious of our thinking there.

At my high school and sixth form we were mainly taught WW1, limited parts of WW2 (mainly the inter-war years, Germany, and the causes of WW2), the American Civil War, American Civil Rights, Vietnam, Victorian politics, and post-WW2 British politics. I think that may have been the lot, actually… We didn’t touch medieval history, or Early Modern (this we did in Middle School), antiquity, or anything else.

I can imagine that a lot of American schools mainly teach the Civil War, the American Revolution and founding, Civil Rights, etc? All important stuff, but by only dealing with these rather narrow sorts of topics then people risk missing out on the wider, global, older history which still continues to shape the current world. I started to appreciate this more when I started studying ancient history at uni. I started to see how the world really fits together, and how humanity in some ways has never changed (but, importantly, in others it has).

I’m not saying that we should all dedicate each day thumbing through dusty tomes and learning ALL of history. There’s much history which I’m still ignorant of, and would like to learn more about. A lot of misunderstandings happen (for example, fearing an ‘other’ group) which can be explained and understood by looking into the history.

We should appreciate that we’re all the products of our history.

However, you can also go too far there. I’m not a fan of the whole identity politics thing as this sometimes involves a dishonest look at history, and a re-write or re-branding of historical narratives. It’s a form of modern myth-making which is stamped as ‘reality’ and then considered seriously as factual. We need to be honest with ourselves and consider what really happened regardless of our personal agendas and feelings.

We need to move forward equipped with our knowledge of our past in order to better ourselves and try to avoid some of the same mistakes (although, realistically, humans make some of the same mistakes in each generation – many of us make a lot of the same personal mistakes that our parents made, and so on). We can move forward, but I think we should not attempt to move forward with our hands cuffed and our souls imprisoned (metaphorically speaking) as punishment for our ancestors’ actions. That is taking things too far, and is in a way a new form of Original Sin. I'd rather consider people as individuals again rather than categorise and group people into collective hives. Let’s learn from history that this can be unhealthy. Let's work together in solving the problems of the present for a better future, and learn from the past in order to do so, but let us not let an ugly interpretation of the past weigh us down as we do so. Attempting to right wrongs with new wrongs is, sadly, repeating the mistakes of our ancestors. Break the cycle. Transcend!

I'll stop now, but I had a point somewhere.
 
If we do not learn from the past, we are more bound to repeat it. Knowing past history facts like you mentioned don't hold as much weight in my eyes as knowing or not knowing of the wrong doings of the past. We should also look at history and see what things WERE done correctly, and try to incorporate that in our world today. Two of those things would be a sense of honor/honesty and a good work ethnic; both of which I feel are on the decline in the US and will only continue to be that way as time goes by.


A lot of people say this, which to a degree I agree with, but we need to expand on this, a lot of the problems and controversies that are coming up today, in Africa, Middle East, and if you are an American, what is going on with the election year, are all based on history,

Now I don't think knowing every little date is important, but I think learning why things are the way they are right now is very important, like why America's political system is set up as it is, (electing president through the electoral college and etc.) That way people can really make a point as to why something should or shouldn't be changed.

Dionysos

As far as in America, we basically are (as far as I remember maybe someone who is younger than me can tell me if it changed or if they are taught something different) We were taught Columbus coming to America, then a little of Spanish occupation of mainly central America, then the British colonization, and a tiny bit of the French colonization, and the French/Indian war as we call it, (the Seven years war as the rest of the world knows it as) Then basically the revolutionary war, and some parts in between until the Civil war, then basically Black civil rights and maybe a page of women's rights.
 
As far as in America, we basically are (as far as I remember maybe someone who is younger than me can tell me if it changed or if they are taught something different) We were taught Columbus coming to America, then a little of Spanish occupation of mainly central America, then the British colonization, and a tiny bit of the French colonization, and the French/Indian war as we call it, (the Seven years war as the rest of the world knows it as) Then basically the revolutionary war, and some parts in between until the Civil war, then basically Black civil rights and maybe a page of women's rights.

Okay, thanks.

Yeah most of that stuff is what I expected may be taught there. It’s important stuff to teach, but if it is all that is being taught then it is promotes a very isolated and America-centric view of the world. It would be healthy to include modules on non-American history too. I’m sure some schools do, but I wonder if some students have to wait until they get to college or university before they can broaden their knowledge of history in that way, whereas many people may be let out into the world only knowing selective facts about America (or Europeans coming to America), and even these might not be taught effectively.

It might seem obvious that American history is most important to Americans, but when it comes to global matters (as well as understanding America in context) it helps to be educated on a broader scale of historical subjects.


EDIT - I think I should make it clearer that I'm aware that most (likely all) countries mainly focus on their own history for education in schools. So long as a good contextual grounding is included, it isn't a bad thing. We may all get along (maybe even globally speaking) a lot easier if we did understand wider history, however.
 
My education pertaining to history was rather broad I suppose then (I live in America). We only had like two classes all throughout school that were just about American history; namely, two American History classes. The rest were about the world as a whole, from different religions, to various major sections in history, and an absolute ton of WWII. The only thing that I really found disappointing was that we never learned about people like Mao. There was a lot of emphasis on how destructive Hitler was, but not any mention of the fact that Mao (and even Stalin) being in power resulted in many more deaths. I totally get that Hitler was more overtly evil, but it frustrated me that my school district ignored more economical/political devastation, for the sake of focusing on the drama of Hitler and the Nazi regime.
 
Change is typically not going to occur until it is deemed an issue. It also has to be possible for the people to make a difference. History is so massive, that is it impossible for everybody to equally appreciate it. Like you for example are very concerned with the issues of the world. Some other person in the world that has grown up in an environment mainly being peaceful probably isn't going to see the value in world issues to the same extent. I can appreciate great feats that have been accomplished such as ZaXo Ken' Ichi's example with the pyramids, The Great Wall of China, or The Statue of Liberty. Another person on the other hand may not care at all about such things. In short history is going to have different values to different people depending on what aspect is being addressed.
 
For the average Joe, learning history is irrelevant. For those who rule, it is critical.

When you rule it is good to remember that history is primarily an accumulation of the stories of other people who ruled. It is tempting to dismiss the personalities involved as outdated nitwits who had not the benefits modern science or toilet paper. It is tempting to rely only on the strength of one's own limited reason. But to stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before, to let those stories engender wisdom, is useful for the decisions of today.

The problem with this for a democratic society is, only a minority of all the population can realistically ever attain this wisdom. In theory, you can take any pupil and, through practice, make him into a genius on any subject you could name. In theory, do this for all members of a democratic society, and the people ought to elect better leaders. But in practice, the expense of giving this kind of education to everyone is prohibitive. If every wayward student were pursued to the utmost to determine what factors need be changed to motivate them to learn this much history, the staffing requirements would quickly outstrip the supply of educators in the workforce. Consequently, in a democratic society, we are doomed to an electorate that is vested with the power to choose and remove rulers at will but which possesses a mediocre wisdom of how to rule, and no amount of argument or increases in the education budget are going to change that.

Thus furthermore, if you are an average Joe in a democracy, the only time you will ever use history practically is in facile political arguments on Facebook. If you strive to learn history better so that you can demolish said facile political arguments, it will be to no avail, because getting the facts right about history is not a major concern for 99% of such discussions (no matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on); winning the discussion is. If you strive to learn history better to vote better, it will also be to no avail, because your vote will be washed out by the masses.

This is not to say the situation is hopeless. Democracy inevitably collapses into monarchy or oligarchy in all but name, and where there is de facto monarchy or oligarchy, there is the realistic chance that someone with the means of getting a truly good historical education can find himself or herself in the seat of actual power. But that may not happen for some time, and there is sure to be a windfall of persecutions, massacres, and liquidations along the way.
 
Political and world history is but a part of our past.

This history is important, and it's understandable that many people, given the very physical restriction of having one life, will apply the context for their own learning through their own life relevancy. Whether or not we know the exact dates of the Crimean War, or which Viking overlord landed at Dublin bay first, does not speak to our ability apply the lessons learned from history.

Every student beginning a new course or discipline, particularly in college, is treated to the mandatory module that explains the history behind their chosen subject. The history of art, design, music, architecture, writing, poetry, medicine; heck, even make-up, to name a bare few. All of these are just as important to educate our understanding of the world and provide just as relevant contexts for people to learn from. They also present some unique views of our past since they draw their reasoning and inspiration from world events.

I think it's important that everyone is given a rudimentary knowledge of political and world history. It would then become natural for people to start "specialising" in the history that pertains to their life path. I'm not saying that people necessarily become self-centred in this learning as we shouldn't underestimate people's wandering minds and hunger for knowledge! I think it would be pretty hard for a person to go through life without learning some aspects of history, it's steeped in everything we are and do!
 
I think history is important no matter what setting you are in. I think those that ignore history, for those who rule or not, are affected by the past no matter what. If people choose to ignore history period, that's a little of a mistake. Now I'm not saying ALL OF HISTORY IS RELEVANT. I think people can live without knowing Justin Beiber when he's gone.

Without the knowledge of history, whether it be in the technology field, music field, medical field, or political field, it will still apply to your trade.

Most of the stuff is social history obviously like the origination of music and art. Though technical field I find that I still have to know the relevance of how binary was used. Now do I put myself through machine learning and all that, only if I want to lose time in my life. I guess the definition is, when is history called history?

When are things are archived as "No Longer Used." I mean in the social reform of politics even today people are making the same damn mistakes as people did in the Macedonian times. Those who don't just become a statistic in life and actually put a dent inside of our history books have always taught us stuff.

For example - US History Opinions that I've heard that have no way to quantify:

* US Founding Fathers were all Christians.
* America is the land of the Free based on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights
* Slavery no longer exists in America
* Federal Tax and SS Tax are fairly laid out based on Salary Range
* Free Health Care Does NOT work
* America is strictly capitalistic
* America is more socialist than it's ever been
* America has never been as divided politically as it is now (most infuriating remark I've heard)
* I should not vote due to I do not like either candidate (WTF?!?!?!)

So any of these in the past can be basically backed up with a history book. I'm seriously thinking people are just too entitled and just do not care about taking time to read up on historical roles people have played.

In the Geological / Aquatic / Biologic field - Let's talk about why Fluoride is a bad idea in water..
 
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