History: a bad idea in general.

[SWPIGWANG]

Study Systems, Not Events.

The practical reason for studying history is to learn from the past not avoid its mistakes. However "history" as we know it fails badly at this.

As a student to history, one learns of events foremost. When studied like that, events are dramatic, drastic and almost random as the background context information is lost. Knowledge like that is not organized for prediction as one sees only the singletons of events as opposed to patterns. To be effective in organizing the current and managing the future, what one needs is the patterns of the mundane that is the root causes of events and other mundane events. "History", with its limited focus in time and geology and often on large events, misses this completely.

The system of knowledge where historical events are actually organized into something useful would be that of the social sciences. Economics, sociology, anthropology, political science are all far more useful studies than raw history which are nothing more than data inputs into those studies.

-----
The study of history is not only useless for the average person, it actually has a detrimental effect. History is used to generate arbitrary sense of group belonging that is detached with personal values and is used to fuel religious, ethic and nationalist hatred. It would be better to cut a individual off at distant history that is really, realistically irrelevant to the modern day living of a individual and minimize association by incidental relation.

The sense of "history" removes a individual from mere association with the living people he knows and links him with a imaginary group that is devoid of humanity. This is the greatest threat to a functional world today.

A selfish individual or one tied to a living ethic group can be dealt with by a combination of rewards and punishment. A individual whose values is tied to idealism with a group of nebulous imaginary partners are the worst kind of zealot that often could not be stopped short of death.

It is fairly easy to provide justice to individuals. It is extremely difficult to provide "justice" to a abstract concept like a now vanquished nation or loosely connected ethic group. Without history, those concepts would be minimized.
----
As a whole, history should not be part of the education for it does no good at all.

[Dr. Haight]

http://www.intpcentral.com/uploads/strawman2.jpg

[SWPIGWANG]

I think I have defined what I mean by history in this context.

To show that it is a strawman and that there is positive value in making history a part of education and something that ought to be generally known, you need to show what some aspect of history which is not covered in the above post has value.
----
*besides, dramatic statements are better as thread starters*

[zago]

I agree that straightforward knowledge of events is pretty much bullshit. You need a far more integrated approach to it if you actually want it to make any sense. Combining history, psychology, and philosophy is probably a much more effective approach. We read a history of American education book in my philosophy of education class, and I learned a lot from it. It was very in depth, and it showed why our classrooms are the way they are today and made one think how they could be different. Blah blah blah etc. etc.

[Zephyrus055]

When I study history, I like to see what the centers of power were, and what motivations people had to do what they did. Just looking for the sequence of events is meaningless if you ask me. The way I see History is not a random sequence of events, but guaranteed events given the circumstances present. Looking at these events and trying to determine the causes that guaranteed them are a very meaningful intellectual exercise, and can help to derive systems. Read The Prince to see how one man infers systematic conclusions from his very probing analysis of historical events as an example.

[Nighthawk]

The study of military history was pretty helpful to me in my first career. I took a lot of those lessons learned an implemented them into my day-to-day operations.

[rowboat]

The system of knowledge where historical events are actually organized into something useful would be that of the social sciences. Economics, sociology, anthropology, political science are all far more useful studies than raw history which are nothing more than data inputs into those studies.

If history is a data input to other fields it is useful. We need to learn it to have the background necessary for the other fields. The fact that something happened is not useful in itself but it can become useful.

Also, how do you expect people to learn basic history without it being part of education. I consider myself an intelligent person but I didn't know that germany occupied france during wwII until I was taught it in high school. You can't expect people to educate themselves about things even if it's something everyone should know.

edit: then again, memorization of people and places for history tests seems pretty pointless to me. But I still think history should be taught until we have an ok grasp of what happened in the past and in what order and stuff.

[Cynique de Bergerac]

"Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it". But look at the news: it's complicated, how many conspiracy theories are there competing about the last few years? There always were, so how can you really teach more history than the plain what happened about the past? Hitler=Bad - except that in his day, most of the western world thought Stalin=Worse (and were probably right). Today, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban = Bad, 25 years ago when the USA was arming them against the Soviets, they were Good. Have conditions changed? Have they? Probably both, conditions and they angered at realising how they were used for Big Power ends.

The most I remember from 'history' teaching me propaganda is Martin Luther and the 'reformation'. Sure, the abuses he spoke against were genuine enough but that particular Pope had introduced them to finance the Sistine Chapel and soon after, they were abandoned. For the rest, no a time of superstition was not ended for 'enlightenment', the 'Enlightenment' came from abandoning dictatorial religion altogether, but Islam and the monasteries in the Middle Ages had anticipated most of it and liberalised their religious ideas to fit where the Pope couldn't look or couldn't be bothered to, as Protestants could not.

Without the Reformation, science and 'philosophy' (religion) might have remained as much the same thing as in pagan times and religion never have become the repressive demand for absolute unthinking belief that the Bible Belt (and Moslem Wahhabis based on Christian fundamentalists) made it. The Roman Church may have disliked Galileo but that's because he used science to question other doctrines and the pre-reformation united Church might have felt much more tolerant. We can be sure that today there are folks in the Bible Belt far more hostile to Galileo and his successors than any Pope.

[PenguinHunter]

Are you talking about grade school history?

[rowboat]

Are you talking about grade school history?

I guess I shouldn't have assumed he was. If he isn't then I agree.

[SWPIGWANG]

Also, how do you expect people to learn basic history without it being part of education. I consider myself an intelligent person but I didn't know that germany occupied france during wwII until I was taught it in high school. You can't expect people to educate themselves about things even if it's something everyone should know.

Why is there "basic" history? What part about history is basic aside from the part that is easy? Lets look at the piece of information you've provided and determine whether it is "basic" as in a necessary part for the functioning of a modern human.

Well, knowledge of German occupation of France is really not useful to a normal citizen today. The best use one can find out of it is to use it to understand bad anglophile jokes about French military failures.

It is useless to a person's ability to vote effective government or understand the world aside from a tiny part of Europe where they neither care or know about in a modern context (look at US geological knowledge at HS level) and only up to the point of their own historical memories. That is saying, if the French and the Germans stopped teaching this in school and stop caring about it in general, it becomes unnecessary to understanding the world today.

Education about the fall of France often have some amaturish military "justification" like "France used tanks as infantry support" while failing to educate the greater operational art of logistics, chain of command, response time, and reasoning behind encirclement warfare. In any case, a random citizen/civilian is not a part of the military chain of command and have no purpose or need to understand military matters that is no longer relevant. There is no tank army overseeing the western world today where this knowledge is applicable.
-----

So the knowledge about WW2 history is not really all that useful to the understanding of the modern world that we operate in.

Instead, if one learns about the social sciences derived from the era one can learn a lot more relevant lessons. An education in demand-side (keynesian) economics that backdrops the great depression, the nature of facist movements or basic rules of international relations could have lead to governments that would have prevented future mistakes of the type.

Knowledge of the "result" of failure is rather useless from a decision making point of view. What one should learn is "causes" which "basic history" never really spend much time on.


"Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it". But look at the news: it's complicated, how many conspiracy theories are there competing about the last few years? There always were, so how can you really teach more history than the plain what happened about the past?
Its complicated and it should be appreciated. "Basic history" often describe events in simple black white terms with very much reduced set on the causes and fails to educate on the complexity behind events. If this can not be done, historical education should be scrapped altogether for being useless.

Today much of the population have a naive view of the world that is characterized by speech like:

"Bush lied and the war was for oil"
or
"Saddam was a bad man therefore Iraq was a good thing"

and so on.....totally bypassing the motivation of two dozen actors and lead to stupid politics. History repeats itself because people consistently take the wrong lesson from history. By learning a context free "stupid history", all it means is reducing current events down to the same level if idiocy. It is worst than useless: it is simply dangerous.


Today, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban = Bad, 25 years ago when the USA was arming them against the Soviets, they were Good.
If this is the sort of crap that comes from "historical awareness" than history can goto hell. It is utterly useless aside from being a reactionary speech piece of the leading power at the moment.

A social-economic analysis of the causes of fundamentalism would be actually useful, and solutions that comes from the many examples in history would help.

A study like "Counterinsurgency Warfare: theory and practice" is far more useful than poorly moralized "histories" like blah is originally "good" and become "bad" and blah blah blah.

---
The funny thing is that the taliban and al queda only exists because of their attachment to "history" where they "educate" their members about the long history of western world abuses. Without it, there'd be no motivation for this kind of crap.

[SWPIGWANG]

Are you talking about grade school history?

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Either be ignorant and be aware of the ignorance or learn it completely. Any other solution is just dangerous.

[PenguinHunter]

I suppose you'd suggest we ban all news as well.

[rowboat]

Instead, if one learns about the social sciences derived from the era one can learn a lot more relevant lessons. An education in demand-side (keynesian) economics that backdrops the great depression, the nature of facist movements or basic rules of international relations could have lead to governments that would have prevented future mistakes of the type.

Knowledge of the "result" of failure is rather useless from a decision making point of view. What one should learn is "causes" which "basic history" never really spend much time on.

Now that you mention it, I could live without knowing that germany occupied france during WWII, even if it meant I didn't understand Axis and Allies as well. So instead of learning history as a set of people and events, we should learn about useful fields and grab pieces of history to test and prove ideas? I really like that idea. It does sound much more practical. I wonder if the guardian SJ's would ever let this happen?

[SWPIGWANG]

News is used to update the knowledge of the world right now.

History does no such thing. The effect of history is long embedded in current life and the important lesson to learn is the effect and applicable lessons of history on life today as opposed to the historical events themselves.


So instead of learning history as a set of people and events, we should learn about useful fields and grab pieces of history to test and prove ideas? I really like that idea. It does sound much more practical.
Something like that. One grabs pieces of history to learn WHY things happen, not that it did happen.

[rowboat]

I suppose you'd suggest we ban all news as well.

news is current and thus not history

[PenguinHunter]

News is used to update the knowledge of the world right now.

History does no such thing. The effect of history is long embedded in current life and the important lesson to learn is the effect and applicable lessons of history on life today as opposed to the historical events themselves.


Either be ignorant and be aware of the ignorance or learn it completely.

You can't "learn" the news "completely" without historical context. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing remember. . .

[SWPIGWANG]

You can't "learn" the news "completely" without historical context. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing remember. . .
The context is the "present", not some random time in history. If you know the present, than you know all the context you need to know.

"Historical context" is only as important as they are remembered and acted upon in the minds of people today. Historical events that have no immediate effect or simply forgotten are irrelevant.

Instead of learning: "japanese fought this and that in ww2 and bombed force Z in 1942...blah blah", one should learn that "The Japanese today view themselves as victims of war in WW2 due to nuclear bombing and subsequent historical education this has fueled a peace movement and a low level right wing movement."

What actually happened in history is not important. How people remember it is. The former is intellectual curiousity, the latter the real context people act on.

[PenguinHunter]

My point was that your opening line is "Study Systems, Not Events." By definition, news is the reporting of current events.

All I'm saying is if you want to ban history for the average student, then you have to ban news for the average citizen. No one "knows" the present. It's an impossibly large amount of knowledge to contain. You can know pieces of the present and the context surrounding it in which history (that is knowledge of, reasons for and systems surrounding past events) plays a role.

Now again, I assume you are suggesting removing the study of history from junior high school, not university. . .

An argument for leaving history in school (crazy, I know):

First of all I think you are neglecting to acknowledge the way childhood education works and the development of the human mind as it matures. You cannot teach a child about systems in the world until they understand that there IS a world outside of where they are now (both in time and space). The easiest way to do this is by teaching what you call "basic history." The child learns about various cultures, states and empires with constant parallels to our own time to keep it relevant to the child. Reinforcing when certain events happened also helps create a sense of time in the student, allowing a better understanding of their own present as a part of larger series of events which will shape the world to come. They understand that their actions have consequences in the future.

Just that teaching that concept alone makes "basic history" valuable.

[SWPIGWANG]

My point was that your opening line is "Study Systems, Not Events." By definition, news is the reporting of current events.

People living in the current have a model of how the world works and news adds to the model. For example, if given the news of a interest rate hike, the individual would re-evaluate his investment options (which is based on a rational model with a number of assumptions built in) with this new piece of information. Most pieces of news adds to one's understanding of how the world works and the internal model that we use for decision making.

It is true, however, that by putting things into isolated events that learning about the world from news is very inefficient. It is only done so because hindsight is not available and one has to piece together all the parts one by one into a coherent worldview.

When talking about historical lessons, there is no reason to use the utterly inefficient method of learning fragments and piecing them together on a individual basis when others have done so already. The limited nature of basic historical education means that there is far to much gaps to really piece them together into anything useful anyways.

Ultimately, from a functional point of view, the purpose of the events is to build a model for the prediction of the future and the most efficient method to doing so should be used.

---
Now, I'm not calling for a banning of history as a study or anything. However it should be removed from public education where it is crammed down the throat of disinterested people that will never make good use of it. People interested in history may be willing to study all the relationships and synthesize some real understanding out of it, but for the rest of people they'd be better off learning how to google if they ever needed the information than wasting precious time and memory on the matter.


You cannot teach a child about systems in the world until they understand that there IS a world outside of where they are now (both in time and space). The easiest way to do this is by teaching what you call "basic history." The child learns about various cultures, states and empires with constant parallels to our own time to keep it relevant to the child. Reinforcing when certain events happened also helps create a sense of time in the student, allowing a better understanding of their own present as a part of larger series of events which will shape the world to come. They understand that their actions have consequences in the future.

It is not as if we have a lack of things to teach. In this modern era of accelerated change and hyper information explosion, just covering the current is more than enough to teach kids the scope of the world and the meaning of time, in this time. This era is not that of the dark ages where lives remain constant for 500 years. No, this is a era where the population doubles in a generation, with more growth in 60 years than the past thousand. This is a era of constant ongoing technological revolution and one where the basis of human stored information doubles on the order of years. This is a era where the entire planet is only a day away from any other point on the planet. There is 150 nation states, countless cultures and subcultures all in available for study in unprecedented detail. With the accelerating change, the half life importance of historical events become shorter than any other time in history.
On this planet today there exist people living from Stone Age cultures up to cybernetic ones and everything in between, all of which better documented than any other time period.

Unlike learning about something in history, all those things we learn about today are accessible and more relevant than any bygone life in the eons long gone. In this world of information explosion, the important thing is focus on the relevant.

Just the teaching about entire planet of things that happened the past 30 years in any detail would be straining the education system. To teach about fanciful things like myth of queens and kings is just ineffective.

Yes, a sense of history gives the modern man a sense of his place in relation to all those that have lived before. The problem is that that sense is not particularly useful. (except, perhaps, to make posts like this)

[PenguinHunter]

People living in the current have a model of how the world works and news adds to the model. . . Most pieces of news adds to one's understanding of how the world works and the internal model that we use for decision making.

Fragments of history, just like fragments of the present, still add to one's understanding of the world. Events from the past carry over to the present and affect the current world. Learning about these events help children understand why things in the world exist as they do and also help show how things change with time. You can't capture that concept without teaching children basic history.


It is not as if we have a lack of things to teach. In this modern era of accelerated change and hyper information explosion, just covering the current is more than enough to teach kids the scope of the world and the meaning of time, in this time. . .On this planet today there exist people living from Stone Age cultures up to cybernetic ones and everything in between, all of which better documented than any other time period.

I'm not really sure that it is. . . Imagine this from a child's perspective, especially in Europe or North America. They learn about the current. They learn that we are rich and a lot of the rest of the world is poor. They learn that we have lots of technology that some cultures don't even know exists. How do you teach respect for other cultures without your own history as a guide? (To say, our culture was once the same, and we are fundamentally the same as them.) I think "basic history" lessons help establish ethical principles of the society in the minds of children. Whether these principles are positive or negative they are still a necessary starting point in the education the child who can then go on to accept or reject them through more systematic study. Basic history presents the child with a series of situations where they are allowed to judge actions from the past. Some of the time this involves remembering dates, names and places; however, the ultimate goal of the education system is not the memorization of facts, but the creation of a groundwork for the child's independent analysis of situations past and present.

I happily agree that more class time devoted to the current world would benefit students greatly but you haven't been very convincing about the elimination of a basic history class for, say, a 12 year-old.

Just on a side note, have you ever taught children or worked in a public school system?


Yes, a sense of history gives the modern man a sense of his place in relation to all those that have lived before. The problem is that that sense is not particularly useful.

It creates the sense that your actions do not only affect the present but also the future.


This era is not that of the dark ages where lives remain constant for 500 years.

A minor pet-peeve. . . "the dark ages" were actually a remarkable source of innovation and invention, despite the label. . . Might this be one of your examples of "basic history" leading to incorrectly analyzed systems?

[LongSilence]

You just successfully criticised teaching history at a highschool freshman level. You have however failed to recognise that proper study of history involves examining the circumstances surrounding the events that take place.

For instance, my History classes involved studying the basics of the economies, the legal systems, societies and cultures of the chief nations under analysis. Looking at Hitler's rise to power we examined the politics of the Weimar government, social conditions in Germany and the effects of the Western depression in the 30's. Looking at Medieval Britain we studied the various legal innovations and systems, the differing standards in coinage and weaponry and the living conditions of the different classes.

The study of "History" is both a introduction into the various social studies and importantly a lesson in the significance of alternate perspectives on events. Historians analyse sources of information and compare and contrast them in order to gain a clearer and wider appreciation of why things happened as they happened. They, more than any other student, become acquainted with the influence of bias and the fallibility of man-made records.

If you think the early stages of learning certain subjects at school is misguiding then you are right. I remember that much of what people get taught when they are 14 about chemistry is later overruled by clearer and deeper examination of the science. Similarly, much of what is taught to young kids is either hopelessly limited or just plain wrong. But it's the better way to ensure that at least everyone gets some sort of chance of understanding the ideas behind most subjects.

[LongSilence]

The basis of your assumption is that people already have a basic knowledge of the events and thus it is more important to learn their effects. However, this is only because history is taught to young children. If they didn't learn it you'd quickly have millions of kids not knowing who fought in World War II, the Cold War, the Gulf War and why they did so. They wouldn't have any idea who Hitler actually was and how he took a disaffected country and transformed its democratic government into a Fascist dictatorship.

To teach just the present would likely encourage a sort of arrogant ignorance. America is top of the world, which can basically be taken as a sign that they always have been, right? Who needs to learn about its achieving independence or its civil wars?

[kuranes]

When talking about historical lessons, there is no reason to use the utterly inefficient method of learning fragments and piecing them together on a individual basis when others have done so already.

I can see merit in both your arguments and your opponents.

Looking back, retroactively, I can see where my own early education could have been more profitably spent learning about things more immediately useful to me than being able to memorize facts like "the leading crop in Idaho is potatoes" and "Lake Champlain was first discovered on the date so and so".



Now, I'm not calling for a banning of history as a study or anything. However it should be removed from public education where it is crammed down the throat of disinterested people that will never make good use of it. People interested in history may be willing to study all the relationships and synthesize some real understanding out of it, but for the rest of people they'd be better off learning how to google if they ever needed the information than wasting precious time and memory on the matter.
I saw an ad for a computer course that promised the students that they would be getting right into learning programming versus having to spend a lot of time initially on learning the "history of computers" etc., and I chuckled in recognition of this attempt to appeal to the same grumbling concerns that I had felt as a young man. Not to say that learning the history of computers at some point wouldn't help by giving some context.



It is not as if we have a lack of things to teach. In this modern era of accelerated change and hyper information explosion, just covering the current is more than enough to teach kids the scope of the world and the meaning of time, in this time. This era is not that of the dark ages where lives remain constant for 500 years. No, this is a era where the population doubles in a generation, with more growth in 60 years than the past thousand. This is a era of constant ongoing technological revolution and one where the basis of human stored information doubles on the order of years. This is a era where the entire planet is only a day away from any other point on the planet. There is 150 nation states, countless cultures and subcultures all in available for study in unprecedented detail. With the accelerating change, the half life importance of historical events become shorter than any other time in history.
On this planet today there exist people living from Stone Age cultures up to cybernetic ones and everything in between, all of which better documented than any other time period.

Unlike learning about something in history, all those things we learn about today are accessible and more relevant than any bygone life in the eons long gone. In this world of information explosion, the important thing is focus on the relevant.

True. Sometimes the past is relevant, though. Todays' news is tomorrow's history. Just as in the "What is Art?" thread we may say "At exactly what point did these 'knit fragments' become 'meaningful processes' " ? Sometimes the line is clear and sometimes it is blurry.



You just successfully criticised teaching history at a highschool freshman level............
If you think the early stages of learning certain subjects at school is misguiding then you are right. I remember that much of what people get taught when they are 14 about chemistry is later overruled by clearer and deeper examination of the science. Similarly, much of what is taught to young kids is either hopelessly limited or just plain wrong.
Agreed. I could agree with the OP that much could be eliminated, versus the extreme "all should be eliminated" that his language seems to suggest.

"it's the same news every day, you know. it just happens to different people and at different places." - heard on the Hee-Haw program years ago, spoken by the "Grandpaw" character

[intrepid_wanders]

The basis of your assumption is that people already have a basic knowledge of the events and thus it is more important to learn their effects. However, this is only because history is taught to young children. If they didn't learn it you'd quickly have millions of kids not knowing who fought in World War II, the Cold War, the Gulf War and why they did so. They wouldn't have any idea who Hitler actually was and how he took a disaffected country and transformed its democratic government into a Fascist dictatorship.

To teach just the present would likely encourage a sort of arrogant ignorance. America is top of the world, which can basically be taken as a sign that they always have been, right? Who needs to learn about its achieving independence or its civil wars?

Agreed.

Human beings in general have a very short attention span and find it useful to write things down from their 'current' perspective. Look through some older articles and reports that you may have written and you might notice a slight difference or a complete shift in the way you are thinking now.

History is needed for the context of any system study that may be performed. Also, from philosophical point of view, Orwellian memory holes can be a distressing situation.

History remains constant, but it is the analysis of the history is always in a state of change. Without historical references (no matter how bias) you have nothing to compare your current perceptions against.

[Sadie_Burke]

The real value of studying history is reading, analyzing and contrasting historiographies. Debates between "prime mover" and "social" historians can be quite lively and enlightening. As an amateur historian (technically I am in the "social sciences" but my particular field is considered "multi-disciplinary") I don't see the purpose of historical studies or employing any cannon in the historical method arsenal as remotely related to the avoidance of "repeating past mistakes." Historians look at the present very much like doctors look at patients, we don't really care if it lives or dies.

The only thing that study of history is pragmatically useful for, is show you how little interlocking systems change on the macro level. The details may change (technology, figureheads) but the operation and management of the systems, in my opinion, typically don't.

I find the study of history to be deliciously pessimistic and therefore should be given twice as much class time in required grade and high schools.

[Thevenin]

History may be unimportant to some people here and it's just fine with me if they can't understand its utility. But, I'm an investor, and while past performance of a stock, fund, bond, commodity, etc. may not predict future results, economic history, and history in general, are damned important to me because they provide the data I use to make decisions. Importantly, these data provide context for what is going on today. That is, not much is new. But they also provide historical numbers against which investment hypotheses can be tested. There aren't many scientific fields where the experiments have been done and/or continue to be done automatically, and where all the data are in the historical record. So, to me history is, at the very least, tangibly useful in helping me make money, thus keeping me independent, and allowing me to be hermetically sealed from the world when I choose to be.

In the broadest sense, successful people, regardless of personality type, are those who effectively leverage their experience (i.e., historical data) with their intelligence (i.e., facility for thinking) to take action. Without history, be it personal or collective (e.g., cultural, technological, political, whatever), you have no data upon which to ponder and develop your next move.

Checkmate.

[SWPIGWANG]

Its not so much knowledge of history is useless, but the organization of historical education is ineffective.

One of my favorite books of all times is "Guns, Germs and Steel." It is a book grounded by a large amount of historical information, however fundamentally it is not about history. While a number of historical examples are given, they are examples that is used to illustrate the thesis of geological determinism behind the development of civilization. If find this single book have been far more important in my understanding of the world than the disjointed world history of the past thousand year that I was forced to learn.

History is most important when temporal and geological proximity is removed and reorganized by the similarity in mechanisms and systems. The history of British Imperialism can be compared to the neo-American semi-imperialism in the development of global free trade empires. The economic growth in post civil war US can be used to relate to modern east asian developments. One can relate the family based social structure of southern Italy with the nepolism of Africa and subsequent failures of government. There are many links across time and space.

Time and place, ultimately is a distraction as the relevant lessons from history is not limited to a specific time frame. It would however be absurd to learn about ever piece of history and prehistory of the human time line, and one has to make them more concise. Yes, one would need to know about the rate of evolution of systems, but that is about it.


Historians look at the present very much like doctors look at patients, we don't really care if it lives or dies.
We force people to learn things because it is useful, not because it is intellectually interesting. Or why do we try to each everyone to play chess at a grandmaster level?


I saw an ad for a computer course that promised the students that they would be getting right into learning programming versus having to spend a lot of time initially on learning the "history of computers" etc., and I chuckled in recognition of this attempt to appeal to the same grumbling concerns that I had felt as a young man. Not to say that learning the history of computers at some point wouldn't help by giving some context.
As someone that has just finished a computer engineering degree (perhaps this is behind my mechanistic and reductionist tendencies), I can tell you that neither engineering students or computer science people spend much time learning about history of computing. It is simply useless to the functional ability of writing code. Spending that time in either a real programming assignment, learning more discrete math or studying programming styles are far more important.

History of computing does not count toward graduation of computer professional other than being a free elective anyways.

Context is not useful unless predictions is needed.


But, I'm an investor, and while past performance of a stock, fund, bond, commodity, etc. may not predict future results, economic history, and history in general, are damned important to me because they provide the data I use to make decisions.
I do not disagree. However historical lessons about economic futures is best learned though informative models, starting from marginalist microeconomic to classical macro economics to keynesian to monetarist models. Once those models are taught, people can gather information on their own and understand the implication without further education.

The traditional historical education would likely teach about the dates of economic disasters with some afterthoughts or random statistic and vague descriptions thrown in. A student simply do not know enough to understand the implication of 1000% per year inflation or the basic relationship between interest rates, investment, monetary expansion and growth.

A standard education of the great depression would talk about the general woe behind the economic status and some vague, politicized description of the new deal programs. Some fundamental causes like "downward sticky prices" induced deflationary cycle are too complex to teach without teaching about demand side macro-economics.

What would be better is to have a economics class teach about the various effects of inflation, deflation, monetary policy, growth, employment and production and introduce events like the great depression as an example and use it to compare with the serious boom and bust cycles in the 1800s and contrast the comparative gentle cycles after active central bank intervetion policy becomes the norm.