Why study history

History Helps Us Understand People and Societies
In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies behave. Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a number of disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials? How can we understand genius, the influence of technological innovation, or the role that beliefs play in shaping family life, if we don't use what we know about experiences in the past? Some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or theories about human behavior. But even these recourses depend on historical information, except for in limited, often artificial cases in which experiments can be devised to determine how people act. Major aspects of a society's operation, like mass elections, missionary activities, or military alliances, cannot be set up as precise experiments. Consequently, history must serve, however imperfectly, as our laboratory, and data from the past must serve as our most vital evidence in the unavoidable quest to figure out why our complex species behaves as it does in societal settings. This, fundamentally, is why we cannot stay away from history: it offers the only extensive evidential base for the contemplation and analysis of how societies function, and people need to have some sense of how societies function simply to run their own lives.
History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be
The second reason history is inescapable as a subject of serious study follows closely on the first. The past causes the present, and so thefuture. Any time we try to know why something happened—whether a shift in political party dominance in the American Congress, a major change in the teenage suicide rate, or a war in the Balkans or the Middle East—we have to look for factors that took shape earlier. Sometimes fairly recent history will suffice to explain a major development, but often we need to look further back to identify the causes of change. Only through studying history can we grasp how things change; only through history can we begin to comprehend the factors that cause change; and only through history can we understand what elements of an institution or a society persist despite change.
The importance of history in explaining and understanding change in human behavior is no mere abstraction. Take an important human phenomenon such as alcoholism. Through biological experiments scientists have identified specific genes that seem to cause a proclivity toward alcohol addiction in some individuals. This is a notable advance. But alcoholism, as a social reality, has a history: rates of alcoholism have risen and fallen, and they have varied from one group to the next. Attitudes and policies about alcoholism have also changed and varied. History is indispensable to understanding why such changes occur. And in many ways historical analysis is a more challenging kind of exploration than genetic experimentation. Historians have in fact greatly contributed in recent decades to our understanding of trends (or patterns of change) in alcoholism and to our grasp of the dimensions of addiction as an evolving social problem.
One of the leading concerns of contemporary American politics is low voter turnout, even for major elections. A historical analysis of changes in voter turnout can help us begin to understand the problem we face today. What were turnouts in the past? When did the decline set in? Once we determine when the trend began, we can try to identify which of the factors present at the time combined to set the trend in motion. Do the same factors sustain the trend still, or are there new ingredients that have contributed to it in more recent decades? A purely contemporary analysis may shed some light on the problem, but a historical assessment is clearly fundamental—and essential for anyone concerned about American political health today.
History, then, provides the only extensive materials available to study the human condition. It also focuses attention on the complex processes of social change, including the factors that are causing change around us today. Here, at base, are the two related reasons many people become enthralled with the examination of the past and why our society requires and encourages the study of history as a major subject in the schools.
The Importance of History in Our Own Lives
These two fundamental reasons for studying history underlie more specific and quite diverse uses of history in our own lives. History well told is beautiful. Many of the historians who most appeal to the general reading public know the importance of dramatic and skillful writing—as well as of accuracy. Biography and military history appeal in part because of the tales they contain. History as art and entertainment serves a real purpose, on aesthetic grounds but also on the level of human understanding. Stories well done are stories that reveal how people and societies have actually functioned, and they prompt thoughts about the human experience in other times and places. The same aesthetic and humanistic goals inspire people to immerse themselves in efforts to reconstruct quite remote pasts, far removed from immediate, present-day utility. Exploring what historians sometimes call the "pastness of the past"—the ways people in distant ages constructed their lives—involves a sense of beauty and excitement, and ultimately another perspective on human life and society.
History Contributes to Moral Understanding
History also provides a terrain for moral contemplation. Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the past allows a student of history to test his or her own moral sense, to hone it against some of the real complexities individuals have faced in difficult settings. People who have weathered adversity not just in some work of fiction, but in real, historical circumstances can provide inspiration. "History teaching by example" is one phrase that describes this use of a study of the past—a study not only of certifiable heroes, the great men and women of history who successfully worked through moral dilemmas, but also of more ordinary people who provide lessons in courage, diligence, or constructive protest.
History Provides Identity
History also helps provide identity, and this is unquestionably one of the reasons all modern nations encourage its teaching in some form. Historical data include evidence about how families, groups, institutions and whole countries were formed and about how they have evolved while retaining cohesion. For many Americans, studying the history of one's own family is the most obvious use of history, for it provides facts about genealogy and (at a slightly more complex level) a basis for understanding how the family has interacted with larger historical change. Family identity is established and confirmed. Many institutions, businesses, communities, and social units, such as ethnic groups in the United States, use history for similar identity purposes. Merely defining the group in the present pales against the possibility of forming an identity based on a rich past. And of course nations use identity history as well—and sometimes abuse it. Histories that tell the national story, emphasizing distinctive features of the national experience, are meant to drive home an understanding of national values and a commitment to national loyalty.
Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship
A study of history is essential for good citizenship. This is the most common justification for the place of history in school curricula. Sometimes advocates of citizenship history hope merely to promote national identity and loyalty through a history spiced by vivid stories and lessons in individual success and morality. But the importance of history for citizenship goes beyond this narrow goal and can even challenge it at some points.
History that lays the foundation for genuine citizenship returns, in one sense, to the essential uses of the study of the past. History provides data about the emergence of national institutions, problems, and values—it's the only significant storehouse of such data available. It offers evidence also about how nations have interacted with other societies, providing international and comparative perspectives essential for responsible citizenship. Further, studying history helps us understand how recent, current, and prospective changes that affect the lives of citizens are emerging or may emerge and what causes are involved. More important, studying history encourages habits of mind that are vital for responsible public behavior, whether as a national or community leader, an informed voter, a petitioner, or a simple observer.
What Skills Does a Student of History Develop?
What does a well-trained student of history, schooled to work on past materials and on case studies in social change, learn how to do? The list is manageable, but it contains several overlapping categories.
The Ability to Assess Evidence. The study of history builds experience in dealing with and assessing various kinds of evidence—the sorts of evidence historians use in shaping the most accurate pictures of the past that they can. Learning how to interpret the statements of past political leaders—one kind of evidence—helps form the capacity to distinguish between the objective and the self-serving among statements made by present-day political leaders. Learning how to combine different kinds of evidence—public statements, private records, numerical data, visual materials—develops the ability to make coherent arguments based on a variety of data. This skill can also be applied to information encountered in everyday life.
The Ability to Assess Conflicting Interpretations. Learning history means gaining some skill in sorting through diverse, often conflicting interpretations. Understanding how societies work—the central goal of historical study—is inherently imprecise, and the same certainly holds true for understanding what is going on in the present day. Learning how to identify and evaluate conflicting interpretations is an essential citizenship skill for which history, as an often-contested laboratory of human experience, provides training. This is one area in which the full benefits of historical study sometimes clash with the narrower uses of the past to construct identity. Experience in examining past situations provides a constructively critical sense that can be applied to partisan claims about the glories of national or group identity. The study of history in no sense undermines loyalty or commitment, but it does teach the need for assessing arguments, and it provides opportunities to engage in debate and achieve perspective.
Experience in Assessing Past Examples of Change. Experience in assessing past examples of change is vital to understanding change in society today—it's an essential skill in what we are regularly told is our "ever-changing world." Analysis of change means developing some capacity for determining the magnitude and significance of change, for some changes are more fundamental than others. Comparing particular changes to relevant examples from the past helps students of history develop this capacity. The ability to identify the continuities that always accompany even the most dramatic changes also comes from studying history, as does the skill to determine probable causes of change. Learning history helps one figure out, for example, if one main factor—such as a technological innovation or some deliberate new policy—accounts for a change or whether, as is more commonly the case, a number of factors combine to generate the actual change that occurs.
Historical study, in sum, is crucial to the promotion of that elusive creature, the well-informed citizen. It provides basic factual information about the background of our political institutions and about the values and problems that affect our social well-being. It also contributes to our capacity to use evidence, assess interpretations, and analyze change and continuities. No one can ever quite deal with the present as the historian deals with the past—we lack the perspective for this feat; but we can move in this direction by applying historical habits of mind, and we will function as better citizens in the process.
History Is Useful in the World of Work
History is useful for work. Its study helps create good businesspeople, professionals, and political leaders. The number of explicit professional jobs for historians is considerable, but most people who study history do not become professional historians. Professional historians teach at various levels, work in museums and media centers, do historical research for businesses or public agencies, or participate in the growing number of historical consultancies. These categories are important—indeed vital—to keep the basic enterprise of history going, but most people who study history use their training for broader professional purposes. Students of history find their experience directly relevant to jobs in a variety of careers as well as to further study in fields like law and public administration. Employers often deliberately seek students with the kinds of capacities historical study promotes. The reasons are not hard to identify: students of history acquire, by studying different phases of the past and different societies in the past, a broad perspective that gives them the range and flexibility required in many work situations. They develop research skills, the ability to find and evaluate sources of information, and the means to identify and evaluate diverse interpretations. Work in history also improves basic writing and speaking skills and is directly relevant to many of the analytical requirements in the public and private sectors, where the capacity to identify, assess, and explain trends is essential. Historical study is unquestionably an asset for a variety of work and professional situations, even though it does not, for most students, lead as directly to a particular job slot, as do some technical fields. But history particularly prepares students for the long haul in their careers, its qualities helping adaptation and advancement beyond entry-level employment. There is no denying that in our society many people who are drawn to historical study worry about relevance. In our changing economy, there is concern about job futures in most fields. Historical training is not, however, an indulgence; it applies directly to many careers and can clearly help us in our working lives.
What Kind of History Should We Study?
There is a fundamental tension in teaching and learning history between covering facts and developing historical habits of mind. Because history provides an immediate background to our own life and age, it is highly desirable to learn about forces that arose in the past and continue to affect the modern world. This type of knowledge requires some attention to comprehending the development of national institutions and trends. It also demands some historical understanding of key forces in the wider world. The ongoing tension between Christianity and Islam, for instance, requires some knowledge of patterns that took shape over 12 centuries ago. Indeed, the pressing need to learn about issues of importance throughout the world is the basic reason that world history has been gaining ground in American curriculums. Historical habits of mind are enriched when we learn to compare different patterns of historical development, which means some study of other national traditions and civilizations.
Why study history? The answer is because we virtually must, to gain access to the laboratory of human experience. When we study it reasonably well, and so acquire some usable habits of mind, as well as some basic data about the forces that affect our own lives, we emerge with relevant skills and an enhanced capacity for informed citizenship, critical thinking, and simple awareness. The uses of history are varied. Studying history can help us develop some literally "salable" skills, but its study must not be pinned down to the narrowest utilitarianism. Some history—that confined to personal recollections about changes and continuities in the immediate environment—is essential to function beyond childhood. Some history depends on personal taste, where one finds beauty, the joy of discovery, or intellectual challenge. Between the inescapable minimum and the pleasure of deep commitment comes the history that, through cumulative skill in interpreting the unfolding human record, provides a real grasp of how the world works.
The uses of history
Why bother with history?
What, then, are the perceived uses of history that have managed to preserve it as a central feature of the American school curriculum despite the misgivings of its critics? Here is a brief overview.
History shows us what it means to be human.
Some of history's greatest historians have seen human self-awareness as the very essence of history. Arnold Toynbee said, "History is a search for light on the nature and destiny of man." R.G. Collingwood wrote, "History is for human self-knowledge...the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is." Who better than Alexander the Great to teach us that human nature encompasses the entire range from cruelty to benevolence?
Psychologist Bruno Bettleheim asserted that human self-knowledge is the most important role of education."Most of all, our schools ought to teach the true nature of man, teach about his troubles with himself, his inner turmoils and about his difficulties in living with others. They should teach the prevalence and the power of both man's social and asocial tendencies, and how the one can domesticate the other, without destroying his independence or self-love." These words of Bettleheim, Toynbee and Collingwood were cited in Mark M. Krug's instructive 1967 book on history and the social sciences in which Krug himself wrote, "A historian is interested in the past because he is interested in life. The true historian's interest in the past...answers a deeply felt need to assure the continuity of human life and discover its meaning, even if the goal is never fully realized."4
History improves judgment.
This is perhaps the most often-cited practical reason for studying history, and it was foremost in the mind of Thomas Jefferson when he wrote that schooling in America's new democracy should be "chiefly historical." He said, "the people...are the ultimate guardians of their own liberty. History by apprising them of the past will enable them to judge of the future. It will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men."5 A century later Woodrow Wilson agreed that history endows us with "the invaluable mental power which we call judgment."6 Now, some two centuries hence, Diane Ravich, a contemporary education policy analyst, affirms the continuing relevance of Jefferson's view, "History doesn't tell us the answers to our questions, but it helps to inform us so that we might make better decisions in the future."7
How are we to understand present realities? On what basis shall we make decisions about the future? Shall we act blindly out of passion and ignorance, or shall we attempt to act rationally based on knowledge? If the choice is knowledge, there is only one place to find it. "The future is an abstraction, the 'present' but a fleeting moment, all else history."8 The great philosopher of education, John Dewey, wrote, "...the achievements of the past provide the only means at command for understanding the present."9
In this age of the World Wide Web, globalism and international terrorism, knowledge of the larger world is seen as increasingly important. Mark M. Krug reasonably noted that, "some basic knowledge about the history of China is essential for an understanding of the present foreign policy of mainland China." While such background knowledge cannot predict future events (Hitler's astonishing repeat of Napoleon's Russian debacle notwithstanding), it can, according to Krug, provide helpful insights: "The knowledge of how men acted in the past, how they have striven to order the life of their respective societies, and how they have striven to overcome diversity, may not always suggest ingenious solutions to present crises, but it undoubtedly makes the task easier by providing a background and a body of past experience. History is indeed an inexhaustible source of examples and modes of life and 'styles of life,' and as such, and to that extent, it is a school of wisdom."10
According to Peter N. Stearns the wisdom available from history is useful not only for understanding great public issues; it also has more personal applications:
"...data from the past must serve as our most vital evidence in the unavoidable quest to figure out why our complex species behaves as it does in societal settings...and people need to have some sense of how societies function simply to run their own lives."11
"Not to know what happened before one was born is always to remain a child." -Cicero
History provides instructive examples.
The use of historical examples is ancient and no doubt predates written language. We can imagine cave dwellers sitting around the evening campfire sharing stories of admired ancestors worthy of emulation. Neitzche said people need models, and historical examples are especially powerful models because they actually existed. Joan of Arc demonstrates the power of individual belief and action. Galileo symbolizes the fight against authority for freedom of thought. Thomas Becket and Thomas More represent integrity in the face of deadly intimidation. Horatio Nelson exemplifies qualities of courage and duty. Hitler personifies evil. While it is not the province of American educators to tell students what their values should be, students can - by judging the actions of historical figures to be admirable or malevolent - advance the construction of their own moral belief systems.
As we know, humans are pattern makers. While many philosophers of history have believed that history is revealed only through its unique events, others have been unable to resist the urge to ascribe pattern to history. Two of the more useful of these patterns were developed by Georg Friedrich Hegel and Oswald Spengler, both of whom saw history as a dynamic process of change.
Spengler developed the organic view that historical cultures, like plants and animals, follow a process of growth, flowering and decline. Certainly, history shows us that individuals and empires may rise, but eventually they will fall.
History makes us better thinkers.
Professor and education theorist E.D. Hirsch, Jr. reports that the cumulative weight of research now supports the view that a "broad grounding in specific facts and information" of the kind supplied by history, science and other academic subjects promotes the development of general thinking skills. He writes, "There is a great deal of evidence, indeed a consensus in cognitive psychology, that people who are able to think independently about unfamiliar problems and who are broad-gauged problem solvers, critical thinkers, and lifelong learners are, without exception, well-informed people."12
This common-sense view is supported by a report from the National Research Council citing studies on the reasoning abilities of experts. Such research is important, says the report, "because it provides insights into the nature of thinking and problem solving." The NRC report states, "It is not simply general abilities, such as memory or intelligence, nor the use of general strategies that differentiate experts from novices. Instead, experts have acquired extensive knowledge that affects what they notice and how they organize, represent, and interpret information in their environments. This, in turn, affects their abilities to remember, reason, and solve problems."13
Many historians and educators share a belief that expert knowledge possessed by historians includes not only factual information, but also the habit of critically analyzing evidence. In their workbook, The Methods and Skills of History, college professors Conal Furay and Michael J. Salevouris provide students with experience in analyzing and interpreting historical information. The authors claim that careful historical study teaches analytical and communications skills that "are highly usable in other academic pursuits - and in almost any career you choose."14
History supports common cultural understanding and dialogue.
Jefferson's hope that historical knowledge gained in school would improve the decision-making capacity of free citizens in a democracy supposes that all citizens would be similarly informed and share a common basis for evaluating and debating the issues of the day. Robert J. Marzano terms this the "heritage model of schooling, which holds that it is the duty of the education community to help society maintain a common culture by passing on specific information to students."15 A Nation at Risk, the 1983 report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, put the matter this way: "A high level of shared education is essential to a free, democratic society and to the fostering of a common culture, especially in a country that prides itself on pluralism and individual freedom."16 E.D. Hirsch, Jr. and his colleagues made an attempt to identify such shared knowledge in their 1993 Dictionary of Cultural Literacy.
Clearly, literacy depends not only on the coding and decoding skills of writing and reading, but equally on the possession of sufficient shared knowledge to give words and ideas meaning. According to Hirsch, "A citizenry cannot read and understand newspapers, much less participate effectively in a modern economy, without sharing the common intellectual capital that makes understanding and communication possible."17 These thoughts echo the words of eminent historian Jaques Barzun who wrote, "The need for a body of common knowledge and common reference does not disappear when a society is largely pluralistic, as ours has become. On the contrary, it grows more necessary so that people of different origins and occupation may quickly find common ground and, as we say, speak a common language...it also ensures a kind of mutual confidence and good will. One is not addressing an alien, blank as a stone wall, but a responsive creature whose mind is filled with the same images, memories, and vocabulary as oneself."18
A foreign-born business executive who wrote to studentsfriend.com described her need for common cultural understanding in a personal and compelling way. To read her message, click here.
History satisfies a need for identity.
Closely associated with the idea of shared cultural understanding is the concept of identity. Questions of identify are a central concern of psychology which has found that loss of identity results in loss of significance; without identity there is little meaning and purpose to life. Beverly Southgate argues that history - the memories of things past - is of "supreme importance" in maintaining a sense of identity. In this context Southgate quotes a character from a Saul Bellow novel who says, "Everyone needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door."19
In 1931, historian Carl Becker said that "Everyman...reaches out into the distant country of the past" to inform his present and his future. "Without this historical knowledge, this memory of things said and done, his today would be aimless and his tomorrow without significance."20 Southgate says the need for identity applies to nations as well as to individuals; cultural identity contributes to meaning, purpose and cohesion in society. Furay and Salevouris think of history as "society's collective memory. Without that collective memory," they say, "society would be as rootless and adrift as an individual with amnesia." They quote philosopher George Santayana who wrote, "A country without a memory is a country of madmen."21
More uses of history
In The Methods and Skills of History, Furay and Salevouris identify two additional uses of history. By exposing us to the "foreign country of the past" (and to actual foreign cultures of today), history can help us develop tolerance and open-mindedness and "perhaps, rid ourselves of some of our inherent cultural provincialism." Furay and Salevouris also note that "Historical knowledge is extremely valuable in the pursuit of other disciplines - literature, art, religion, political science, sociology, and economics."22
Finally, history gives pleasure.
This is why history is popular with the public and why many of us find ourselves toiling in the fields of history education. Part of the joy comes from visiting foreign mental landscapes, part from discovering new things about ourselves and a big part is simply the love of a good story. For those of us with an historical turn of mind, history supplies an endless source of fascination. Unfortunately, for many people, this fascination is not manifested until after high school - after the acquisition of greater experience and interest in the larger world. Teenagers are rightly focused on learning about matters close at hand, such as their emerging sexuality and how they will fit into the adult world. Still, students are only with us during their youths, so teachers must do their best to lay a solid foundation for that longer view while the opportunity exists.
History in school
The future, not the past, is the point of schooling; education is meant to assist both students and society to function effectively in the future. Learning about the past for its own sake is an interest or a hobby and not a proper subject for schooling. Voltaire said, "Life is too short, time to valuable, to spend it in telling what is useless." Nietzche said, "We want to serve history only to the extent that history serves life."23
We study the past in school not because students need to know a collection of old facts, but because history helps them understand how the world works and how human beings behave. Knowledge of the past is required for understanding present realities. When people share some common knowledge of history, they can discuss their understandings with one another.
Students familiar with history know their unique place in the stream of time; they have a sense of the trajectory of human development, where it may veer off course and how it might be kept on track. A democracy needs citizens with such judgment and wisdom; the past is the only place to find it