Is the knowledge of history important to you or is it just trivia?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’m doing a master’s in history. While I definitely enjoy it, I don’t see it as a calling the way some of my classmates do - I sometimes want to remind them that they are not actually on par in social importance with nurses and street cleaners. :wink:

[quote=“Ruminator, post:1, topic:495697”]

[li]Do you feel history in general is just useless trivia (memorizing dates of kings and wars)?[/li][/QUOTE]

No. I’m pretty bad with dates, actually, though I’m pretty shocked when I meet people who don’t know dates like the beginning of the world wars or Canadian Confederation. By that point, it seems like willful ignorance. (I’m Canadian, of course. I don’t expect non-Canadians to know 1867.) I’m constantly amazed by “amateur” history buffs who know tons of this kind of information, who can rattle off lists of kings, presidents, generals, etc., though I secretly often think they’re missing the big picture.

[quote=“Ruminator, post:1, topic:495697”]

[li]Do you think knowledge of your own country’s history is important but other countries/continents are not important?[/li][/QUOTE]

I’m bored by my own country’s history. I don’t think it’s because my country has a short history, but rather it’s connected to my love of travel - I feel like, I live here all the time, and you want me to study it, too?? That would be like going on vacation to the local mall. It’s much more interesting for me to learn about other countries. Though I have a hard time with non-western history, just because there’s so little that’s familiar, culturally, linguistically, and so on. So I study Europe.

[quote=“Ruminator, post:1, topic:495697”]

[li]Do you think history of a certain time period is important (date-of-birth minus 10 years) but anything before that is trivia?[/li][/QUOTE]

No. This is probably just because I’m an early modernist (seventeenth century, to be precise) but I think that an understanding of culture, at least, of previous centuries is essential. I find that people who don’t learn any of this, who don’t even read non-contemporary novels, see the world as having gone through a thousand years or so of “olden days”, followed by a brief period of change. So there’s this unnatural nostalgia for the past as a timeless age, and people worry because OMG society is changing! Whatever shall we do! Whereas a better knowledge of history shows us the deep roots of many aspects of contemporary society.

Also, a basic knowledge of history should disabuse people like Angry Lurker that utopian views of the recent past are just inaccurate.

(I don’t know who said it originally, but a medievalist professor of mine always quipped that anything after 1500 is just current events. I do have to admit that I have a hard time contemplating studying post 1970s “history” - to me, there is a lack of perspective on that era that makes it more political science or sociology than history.)

[quote=“Ruminator, post:1, topic:495697”]

[li]Do you feel “those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it” is just an empty platitude regurgitated by history teachers?[/li][/QUOTE]

One of my TAs said that if history taught us about the future, historians would be better paid. I think that a knowledge of history is essential to be an educated person, but I think that history should also teach us that cultural context is key, and while there may be some big life lessons to be learnt, politicians can’t draw directly on precedent for policy decisions.

22

The teacher that I did not have in 1º BUP (9th grade) was the kind who stuffed students with stupid trivia. But the problem was with the teacher, not with the subject matter.

I think that it’s not possible to understand current events without some knowledge of history, and wish I knew more of it, both my country and others. Heck, one of the things I learned in this board is that part of the reason I had more problems with Math than with other Sciences is that for other Sciences I was gvien a historical context: for Math, never.

23

I agree with this part wholeheartedly. Sometimes I will be reading a history book (I’m a history major, so I do this stuff for fun) and I’ll start laughing because if I read some of the things I’ve read in a fiction book or seen it in a movie, I’d be pissed because it wouldn’t have been believable. Some of the stuff that has happened in history is completely unbelievable, better than anything an author can come up with.

24

I’ve often wondered how European students differ from Americans in their concept of history.

One of my closest friends, Anna, was born and reared in Rome (and came to live in Alabama- how messed up is that?). She makes me salivate with envy when she talks about high school field trips. In Alabama our field trips included the Capitol and Archives (in fourth grade, when you really really care about primary sources and the legislative process), the Coca Cola bottling plant, and the county courthouse. When Anna, who’s from a middle class family (not rich and not poor), was in school field trips included medieval Cathedrals, castles, Renaissance palaces, the Vatican- all within an easy ride of the Catholic school she attended.
I can’t imagine living in a city that has massive and beautiful buildings that predate Christianity (think of that- the city has been around so long it’s changed Creators!), where on a long walk you’ll see sites associated with the Etruscans, Venus, the Gracchi, Julius Caesar, Pope Gregory I, Charlemagne,
etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. for thousands of years. The “Michelangelo to Mussolin” years are almost like the Godfather III (which, of course, takes place in Rome) in terms of their history; it’s almost overkill. She mentioned her uncle digging a well on his farm outside of Rome and finding a terracotta statue of Minerva- and she mentions it in a ‘no big thing’ sort of way, like I’d mention finding an arrowhead- it wasn’t even the point of the story (which was about digging wells and how finding the statue was an annoyance or would have been if he’d followed the law and reported it [which could have meant archaeologists coming which would have delayed his well]).

Anyway, I’ve asked her- a thousand times- about this, and the strangest thing is she prefers history here. She says we have more respect for it (not all of us obviously, but those who appreciate it) because it’s so rare to come across a living or substantive reminder of it. She laughs (in a ‘that’s so cool’ rather than a condescending way) when a building can’t be torn down because it’s 140 years old, or at the way some southerners venerate their ancestry “all the way back to the Civil War” (by which time Rome was way beyond retirement age).
She says that because Rome is so immersed in history it’s absolutely impossible to grow up there without knowing 2500 years of history- you’re going to know who Pius IX was or the Borgias or the Gracchi or Count Ciazzo or Nero simply because they’re still there- "turn left at the statue of Victor Emmanuel, go til you get to the fountain of the Vestal virgins where you turn right, you’ll pass Pauline Bonaparte’s palace on your right and when you do the Taco Bell will be on your left, can’t miss it; if you see the Botticelli museum you’ve gone a mile too far). But, she says, people are so mired in it they don’t really notice it either, it’s osmosified more than revered. She’s way more interested in the fact I grew up on an Alabama cattle farm than I am that she grew up in a middle class apartment complex on a lot that was once inhabited by gladiators.

I realize of course that Rome is unique even in European cities, and they’re not all that ancient or as important, but no matter where you grow up in Europe you’re convenient (i.e. a few hours ride maximum and probably not that) to centuries old and medieval and usually even ancient ruins, the relics of thousands of years of high civilization, and the old people in your family can remember World War II as near combatants. (It affected my family in Alabama too obviously- the rations and the drafted men and the 24/7 production facilities and the like- but never once were they in fear; my mother and aunt used to laugh remembering the air raid shades on their windows in Billingsley, AL and said even then it was hysterical to think of the Japanese or Germans bombing a city of 100 people 200 miles from the nearest coast.) Here you can drive hours without seeing anything of real historical note architecturally (and most battlefields are pastures with a kiosk and a cannon somewhere, and many house museums are exactly like 40 other house museums). The oldest remaining original buildings of any kind in the U.S.A. still standing would date to generations after the death of Elizabeth I and the oldest great buildings to LONG after that. New York City is 350 years old but you’d never guess it as it seems to have completely sprung up in the 20th century; Atlanta street names and commercials and place names honor their Civil War heritage and there’s not a thing in town Scarlett O’Hara would recognize.
And while technically what’s now the USA has been settled and farmed and even in places urbanized for thousands of years, save for a few-and-very-far-between earthen mound there’s NOTHING to suggest anybody got here before the 19th century in most places.

Sorry for the long detour, but I do have a question to add: how different is the concept and perception of history to those who grew up in Europe? Or for that matter parts of Asia and Africa that have remnants of ancient civilizations?

25

I’m an absolute thinker so I don’t bother to learn anything because I can’t learn everything. I have thought about learning everything I can about a specific thing to at least know something, but that seems dumb too. Also, I don’t know how to get unbiased information that’s not just dry facts.

Because I am frustrated by these factors, I decide I don’t need to know anything off-hand and can always look it up. I’m not happy about it, but that’s how it is.

26

With the exception of “ancient” history, history was always my least favorite subject in school; I truly hated it. This was back in the day when we had to memorize all sorts of names and dates, and I couldn’t have been less interested.

But as an adult, once I started traveling, especially to Europe, I started learning a lot of history in preparation for my trips. I’m especially fascinated by the interaction of forces like philosophy, science, art, politics, etc.

27

I was just thinking about this the other day. I was never a big fan of history classes and only took one semester of history in college. But yesterday it hit me that it seems like a real problem to have people with such a tremendous lack of a clue about what has actually happened in their own country and the world. It results in people making just about all of their decisions without knowing the facts. How messed up is that?

What I was thinking might help is having people study a year of history in their senior year of college, once they’ve developed some critical thinking skills. And H.S. is taught to such a defined curriculum that there’s not much room for critical thinking. In high school it tends to be so much filling your mind with facts to get the grades. It takes a few more years to start realizing how those events from the past relate to the things you are trying to accomplish today. I’m not sure 21 or 22 is even the right age, but it would be harder to try to chase people down at 30 and teach them something.

28

Nothing occurs in a vacuum. Everything in every field and discipline is affected by what comes before, after and sideways. I’m not a student of history; my major is theater but I just finished one of the most entrancing classes I’ve ever had which was a history of the theater from the 1800s to more or less now. I can tell you straight up that my appreciation for the subject matter increased tenfold now that I can take things I see in productions and follow them back to people and movements hundreds of years ago.

29

I know what you mean, Sampiro, and I wish I could have gotten into people’s brains more about that when I lived in Scandinavia when I was 15/16. I think there was a real divide there; I was from central CA and missions were the only buildings I had ever seen that weren’t less than 50 years old. I was completely blown away by the fact that wherever I went, there was always a church or castle that was nearly 1000 years old. The church down the street was from 1100! And I was there in 1989-90, when Romania was falling apart and the Berlin Wall was crumbling–I thought it was totally incredible that I was practically next door, but my classmates didn’t seem to feel the same way at all about any of that. I wish I’d been able to figure that out better.

I think I really disagree about teaching history later. To my mind, a big problem in school history is how it’s pretty much turned into baby food. The textbooks process everything, take out all the interest and personality and anything that might offend anyone in Texas or California, make sure to put in vocabulary words and questions at the end of every chapter–and the result is mind-numbingly dull, tasteless pap. To my mind, we would ideally teach history to younger kids, and make it interesting, with well-written stories, playacting, etc. with plenty of action and interest. With younger kids you don’t need to worry about dates much or about covering everything–just have fun with ancient Romans or samurai or whatever.

30

I do believe that history is important, and it’s a conviction that’s grown on me quite a bit during the past few years. The main reason for this is that my values have changed. During my high school and college years, I firmly believed that almost everyone lived before about 1850 was just an ignorant, superstitious fool who lead a life devoted to worshiping things that did not exist. Now I know better, and that knowledge has opened my mind to the wonders of the human past. I now love reading ancient philosophy, theology, and literature, and while I appreciate them on their own merits, a solid knowledge of history definitely improves the experience.

I don’t care much about dates. There’s nothing wrong with memorizing them, but also not much right with it. The same for lists of kings or presidents, particularly the boring ones. (Yes, Chester Alan Arthur, I’m looking in your direction.) To me, the important part of history is the history of thought: what various groups of people believed at different times, and how and why it changed. Since that part of history necessarily involved some vagueness, some speaking in generalities and ignoring the exceptions, it doesn’t fit well with today’s academy.

As for whether knowledge of history can help us with today’s problems, I believe that it absolutely can. I’m positive that we wouldn’t have tried to invade and subjugate Iraq if we had carefully studied the failed imperialist policies of America in Vietnam, and France in Algeria, and Britain in India, and so forth. I’m sure people wouldn’t put so much naive faith in government programs if they knew how much damage government programs had caused in past. And as a last note, many people when discussing the problem of nostalgia, mention Socrates observing that the weak-moral of youth would lead to the destruction of Athens, and cite this as evidence that we can ignore such sentiments today. But Socrates was right. Those who study history know that.

31

I think the hardest thing about teaching history is the in-between stage. For little kids, they can put on a toga to learn about ancient Romans, and university students can (in an ideal world that is clearly far from my world, sob) engage critically with the academic literature on the subject and read the primary sources to make informed judgements. High school, however, is difficult. They have to learn the dates, if only to be able to build on that later, and have to do a certain amount of memory work. I think that a lot of teachers use games and movies instead of, rather than in addition to, the boring grunt work, but I can see why they do it - parents and administrators don’t think that history is important enough to allow teachers to fail kids who don’t do the work.

Personally, I find high school a boring time for history because it’s when students have to learn the accepted, standard, stereotypical interpretations. You have to get a mental picture of an era before you can learn complexities and nuances, and for most students who are not going to be history buffs, having a mental picture of “the Middle Ages” (as if it’s one era!) as a time when the Church ruled society is what you’d hope for. You can’t teach students too much when the textbooks are what they are, as dangermom points out, and there aren’t the resources for them to do actual research. I’ve seen first- and second-year university students fail to do primary source analyses, so I wouldn’t be too ambitious with those for high school, either.

In short, when people ask if I’m going to be a teacher with my history degree, I just shudder. :wink:

32

Hah! Well, I do agree about that. High-school history is difficult. My hope would be that if kids got history=fun as youngsters, they’d be more willing to try to engage and think about causes in high school. Probably not, though.

33

I didn’t mean to replace the history already taught to children, but to give people another pass at it later in life when they have more of a sense of their place in the world, and more freedom to think for themselves. Not sure if that changes your perspective. Think of all the people who have never traveled outside the US during high school, or even spent much time around people from other countries. Also, think about the extent to which most 16-18 year olds have any political opinions that are not either a) exactly the same as their parents’ or b) a knee jerk 180-degree opposition to their parents. Also, most people don’t get much skill in reading between the lines of nonfiction for bias until they get into upper-division college courses. Those are the kind of things that I think prepare people to get something more worthwhile out of studying history.

34

I think it depends – I was fortunate to have pretty good history teachers in high school (in tenth grade, the one who told us all the gooshy parts, for example)

And our teacher in 11th had us debating the issues of the times, not just spitting out dates and facts.

35

Oh, we got all the fun and games (making toilet paper mummies, trips to Pioneer Village, etc.) in elementary school, and high school history was still boring. The teachers were all kind of idiots, though.

36

Don’t colleges generally have some sort of history requirement already? I thought you meant to do most of the history teaching in college instead of high school. Yes, I agree with you then.

My own college history course was the worst one ever, because my teacher was a cuckoo clock. I made the mistake of taking the course at my one semester in JC, rather than waiting till I got to the university. I am sure, however, that the vast majority of college history courses are much better!

I didn’t get any fun history in elementary school, I guess I missed out! I do not count having to build a mission in 4th grade–as far as I’m concerned, one of the biggest perks of homeschooling is NOT having to build a mission in 4th grade if we don’t want to. I saw way too many missions as a kid and don’t care if I never see one again.

37

I think history gives context to what I’m thinking and places my observations within a framework.

One way of viewing history is that it’s an excellent naturalistic database on human experience and behavior. It’s often impractical, immoral or impossible to do experiments on humans and societies at large but looking at present society through the lens of history can help us better understand the modern world.

For example, the arguments and attitudes that drove the enlightenment and the French Revolution are still very much present with us today and being able to see that helps to critically analyze those arguments.

    • Do you feel history in general is just useless trivia (memorizing dates of kings and wars)?*

I think a lot of history can be trivia and to fixate on any one area of history, while it can be a pleasant hobby, is not very productive. To be a civil war historian or a ancient egyptian historian is fine but it’s not something I could ever do. I prefer to go wide rather than deep.

    • Do you think knowledge of your own country’s history is important but other countries/continents are not important?
* Do you think history of a certain time period is important (date-of-birth minus 10 years) but anything before that is trivia?*

I think it’s almost fractal in nature and viewing history at different time scales has different lessons to teach us. One way of thinking about it is like you’re in the middle of an ocean, huge waves very far away from you are going to have an effect but so are small eddies very close to you. Right now, I think having a good working knowledge of the SARS epidemic is helpful when trying to analyze the effects of swine flu but in 20 years time, I wonder how many people will care. At the same time, I think history on an evolutionary time scale is crucial to understanding the context of humanity within the larger ecosystem.

    • Do you feel “those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it” is just an empty platitude regurgitated by history teachers?*

I get incredibly frustrated sometimes talking to (some very smart) people who don’t have this sense of historical context. It’s difficult to convey to them what are sometimes very subtle and complex thoughts unless they’ve also gone through these revelations themselves.

    • If you had children, do you think it would be more productive for society if they were given the option to substitute history classes for other subjects such as math or English?*

Like other posters have said, teaching history in schools is tough and I don’t know how much kids actually get out of history in schools. I honestly don’t know about this one.

** Is the importance of history knowledge made obsolete because of today’s technology – information at your fingertips via google and wikipedia?*

Google and Wikipedia makes it easier to access the database of facts about history but it does nothing to help the analysis. To me, history is never about the past, it’s always about the present or the future. History is a way of using the past to answer questions that we have about what is or is going to happen. Only having a database of pure historical fact and opinion is worthless.

38

Oh, it’s definitely important. For example, someone might wonder why the IRA used to bomb England so much. The answer to that has to include some history (going right back to Cromwell, really). Or someone might wonder why the recent provo activities in Northern Ireland were such a big deal - again, you need to know your history to be able to answer that.

And why did the Balkan wars happen? Again, you need to know your history to answer that, and you need to know your history to have any chance of understanding what could be done to stop the wars.

Study of history is interesting in itself, but the above practical applications are one of the reasons it is interesting.

And, this just be me, but I like knowng that I’m not just a product of here and now; I’m part of a story which stretches back thousands of years. Also, it’s kinda nice to think that there’s a chance I’ll be remembered in the distant future too even if it’s just by three kids digging up a time capsule. :smiley:

[quote=“Ruminator, post:1, topic:495697”]

[li]Do you think knowledge of your own country’s history is important but other countries/continents are not important?[/li][li]Do you think history of a certain time period is important (date-of-birth minus 10 years) but anything before that is trivia?[/li][/quote]

Teaching your own country’s history is perhaps more important - partly for practical reasons, that you can go and visit real places where significant events occurred, your ancestors might have been involved, and it all just seems more pertinent - but definitely not to the exclusion of knowing about other countries.

I’m not sure I’d count birth-ten years as history. I’m not sure where I’d put the divide, but, if it occured less than a generation ago, it’s not exactly history. The events of my childhood are being taught in schools now, and I’m only 33. Mind you, if it included ‘why so many people hated Margaret Thatcher’ that would be a good thing, since so many people now seem to have forgotten and kids just see a strong woman leader with funny hair.

Of course, we have limited time and brain capacity, so we can’t learn everything. In some ways it’d be better to teach the less ‘important’ but way more interesting parts of history, like teaching more about ancient Rome at secondary school level rather than have us label endless diagrams of Spinning Jennies and read about the relative merits of different kinds of tractors. That period of history does have some interesting parts (like the Levellers), but it’s still a bit bare compared to certain other periods.

No. I wish they did more history, though, especially at primary school level. In British schools there’s far too much focus on maths, English and science (with a little RE and citizenship on the side), which are important, but aren’t exactly going to lead to children with enquiring minds and a broad range of knowledge.

They’ve never once been on a trip to a museum or historic building. This is a school which has a national museum next door, the Tower of London ten minutes away, and interesting stories about the past (to Roman times and back) attached to pretty much every single building and paving stone you pass. What history does get taught seems to be sneaked into English lessons as reading/analysing texts about the past, so, in a way, I guess the teachers are sometimes replacing English with history.

I can’t help thinking that, if their parents aren’t willing to take them to museums and such in their spare time, these kids are going to miss out on the sense of being part of a long human story. That might not make them repeat history, exactly, but I think there is a danger that it will lead to short-termist thinking - and history shows us how dangerous short-termist thinking can be.

Edited for coding. Damn quotes.

39

I’m an historian (Firearms/British Empire) so I’m biased when I say that I think history is vital, even if only to provide context for the world we currently live in.

To start with a basic example: If you live anywhere except Europe/Middle East and speak a language that isn’t a “Native” language, it’s because between 100-500 years ago people in Europe showed up wherever you are now and said to the people living there: “Nice country. We’ll take it.”

Dates are important, to an extent. If you’re not a Medieval Historian then the date King William The Roman Numeralled was crowned isn’t all that important, as long as you’re aware of roughly when he was King (eg late 1430s to early 1450s ish). However, if you are a Medieval Historian then yeah, you’d better know when he was born (as near as anyone knows), when he was crowned, how long he reigned for, and when he died.

Important things that have happened within living memory, however, should be subject to more scrutiny- for example, everyone should know when World War II was (1/9/1939-15/08/1945).

I’d rather kids were given the opportunity to substitute mathematics for history. I’ve never used any mathematics more complicated than arithmetic in my everyday life, but a functional knowledge of history is very useful for understanding the world around us and what’s going on.

Ironically, I’m not that interested in Australian history because, well, it’s really, really boring. Almost nothing of interest has happened here since the mid-late 1800s, IMHO, with a couple of exceptions during WWI and WWII.

British Imperial History tends to be a… difficult thing to study if you’re in any way Pro-Empire, incidentally.

40

Regarding Europe vs. USA:

Much of Europe is awash with historical monuments and settings dating back couple a millennia. Then there are places like Finland, much like the US, in that there’s little anything really old around despite Finns living where they do for the past 11 000 years. Save for a few plain, late medieval churches and even fewer castles of similar age, there’s nothing older than the early 1800’s for the layman to experience, and even that’s confined to a couple larger cities. Were predominantly woodland where the deer and the moose reign.

My personal view on history is a bit unusual. “Old times” are the origins of the genus Homo. My main interest is in what happened in the “middle period”, from the emergence of the fully modern human to the adoption of food production, while anything after that is recent history. I truly feel like this, and have little interest in what happened after the adoption of writing. Can’t study everything, anyway, so…

I can’t really comprehend a mindset where questions like “Why is the world like it is?” or “Where did we come from?” - ie. history - weren’t utterly fascinating. Is it important? Well, is dessert?