Ship of Fools: History, Good God Y'all; What is It Good For?

Thread: History, Good God Y'all; What is It Good For? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

To visit this thread, use this URL:
http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=70;t=026586

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

The famous Santayana quote is

quote:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

What, however, if we are taught improperly? American view of history is generally considered narrow and parochial. The more I learn, the more I think this true of all of us. History is rarely a simple, direct line of cause and effect. And, one needn't travel too far back to find the paths are decidedly faint and exceedingly obfuscated.
So, how true is the quote when the majority do not properly know the history? When much cannot precisely be determined and comparisons are often facile and inaccurate?

Posted by PaulBC (# 13712) on :

May I suggest that the way to look at history is not through the lense of one's nation but rather a reading of many histories of many other nations .

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by PaulBC:
May I suggest that the way to look at history is not through the lense of one's nation but rather a reading of many histories of many other nations .

Thought I had alluded to this, but obviously not well enough.
I do think a comprehensive study is better than a narrow one and that we best understand others when we attempt to see through their eyes. Generally few do.

Posted by stonespring (# 15530) on :

Most people graduating high school and even college in the US do not have a very good understanding of the history even of the US in the past 50 years, let alone any further back or anywhere else. Their knowledge of geography, politics, and religion (even of Christianity) is also pretty poor. I'm not sure how to balance making sure that students are exposed to a breadth of points of view and taught to critically think about the sources that our understanding of history comes from (both of which are essential) with making sure that students have even a basic understanding of past events. Most people on the street cannot even name the major Allied and Axis powers in World War II, or fill in the names of the 50 states on a map. They do not know who represents them in Congress or (again, this is a majority) what the 10 Commandments are. Now, I am not arguing that these things are necessarily more important to know that important things about other cultures (especially of underprivileged groups in this country), but if this is supposedly the elite narrative written by the victors of history, we are not doing a very good job of even teaching that to people.

Posted by PaulBC (# 13712) on :

Stonespring;
I think the pieces of history you refer to are important for people to know . And the facts not only of the USA but all history should be taught as part of a comprehennsive
education.

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

My main uptake of history has been through art and literature. They have the advantage that they were done by people at the time; we have the advantage of knowing what came after. There's a Cranach altarpiece in Weimar that tells you what the Reformation felt like like nothing else. But it's also interesting for what it doesn't contain - women: no Mary, no Magdalene.

The best thing history can do is give you the context for understanding a painting like that - and a great many other physical survivals of the past. You need a chronology and a Who was Who and Who did What, but primarily as a means of accessing the contemporary material.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

The different views of history are most starkly apparent when I speak to people from other countries. History builds mythology.

The recent example that comes to my mind is the end of the Cold War. This history as learned in the West is that the aggressive stance of Pres. Ronald Reagan (USA) in Afghanistan, the arming of the Mujahadeen against the Soviets etc was key in the fall of the USSR. The Mujahadeen, which became the Taliban and allied with Al Qaeda see the defeat of the USSR as something they did, with the 'help' of the West as unimportant. Thus, their version of history leads them to think they can push the West out of the Middle East entirely because they successfully pushed out the Russians and ended their empire.

I'm not sure who is right on this one, but I suspect the foreigners generally lose these things, viz., Vietnam.

Posted by Cedd007 (# 16180) on :

“History repeats itself because no one was listening the first time.” Anonymous.
I prefer this version - possibly because I was a History teacher!

The History we are taught at school seems to have arisen out of a need to have a collection of stories to hold the tribe together. As nation states emerged in the 19th Century, History performed this function for the state. The History that is taught in schools today, in any country in the world, tends in practice to be the History that most people are comfortable with, leaving out the embarrassing bits of the national story.

If you collected the popular Histories of all the modern states in the world you would make some progress in understanding, but not as much as you might think. To begin with, where the stories of different nations overlap, they often disagree, not just on interpretation, but, perhaps surprisingly, on the facts, especially on matters like 'who fired first?' or even 'how many rounds?' Secondly, in many countries there are at this moment debates going on about what happened in the past, with different political points of view, or views about the relative contributions of different ethnic groups.

But even if you added up 200 national histories, you would still be a very long way from getting a comprehensive view of History. National History often ignores regions of the world, and it sometimes makes more sense to look at an entire region, such as Europe, or South East Asia, or even the Atlantic, rather than separate countries. Social and Economic History often explains Political History rather than the other way round. Grand theories of History such as those of Marx or Toynbee can shed much more light than national histories, and the significance of the 1860's, say, will change according to whether they come at the beginning or the end of a period of study. Then there is the study of individual people, family trees, or of small communities: these can be quite as revealing as the stories of countries. Most popular Histories emphasise the role of men and hardly mention women.

There is a divide between how the general public and how academic Historians regard History. History teaching should, I believe, focus on challenging the myths, making use of the latest findings of historical research. Without this, I think the case for dropping History as a school subject will become stronger, and there will be increasing calls for History to become just a part of an investigation where the present is the main focus of study.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

Against Santayana can be set set A.J.P. Taylor’s, “The only lesson that history teaches is that history does not teach lessons”.

The extremism of both statements can be illustrated by an episode in recent history, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.

Adherents of Santayana took the historicist position that the failure of past invasions, such as those by Britain and the Soviet Union, “proved” that this one, too, was inevitably doomed.

Taylorists could argue that the past was irrelevant and could be safely ignored, and that there was no reason why a military plan which took into consideration all contemporary factors shouldn’t succeed.

A mediating position would have looked at history to suggest possible pitfalls, and then decided whether:-

a. failure was extremely likely, and therefore no attempt was worth the risk

b. a short-term quick-fix was almost certainly impossible, but that some limited
objectives, conducted according to a strict timetable, might be achievable

c. a possible comprehensive modernization, liberalization and democratization of Afghan
society (arguably justifiable in terms of Afghanistan’s women and girls) was worth
unavoidable decades of occupation, many billions of dollars and countless thousands
of lives lost

Speaking as a former history teacher, my position is that history does not teach simple lessons, but does provide that sense of context and proportion which is an essential component of a liberal education.

Posted by Olaf (# 11804) on :

We can't judge the effectiveness of history instruction based on simple fact recall. People absorb a big-picture understanding of how history connects together. They may not recall the exact definition of "republic," for instance, but they can mostly explain what a republic is.

There are certainly occupations in which people who practice them have a greater-than-average historical understanding. Indeed, most people in governmental, corporate, and religious positions of leadership posses more knowledge of history than of areas such as math or science.

As for other areas of study, in order to move beyond a simple introductory level to a position of respected expertise, it is almost always essential to understand the historical underpinnings of those areas.

History becomes a part of our schema to so much of an extent that we forget its importance in our formation. It's sort of like saying that you didn't need reading instruction, because you figured it out on your own (in other words, you forgot the details behind your reading instruction.) Sure, some people can live their lives fine without history instruction (or math, or science, or even reading), but we don't know who that will be when they are mere youngsters.

Posted by stonespring (# 15530) on :

I think that an interesting example of a country's bias in the way it teaches history in its schools would be modern Germany. The Nazi Era, WWII, and the Holocaust are taught in a way that portray the German government and large numbers of ordinary German people in a very negative light, and are taught thus in order to warn German students to never allow such a thing to happen again. At least, this is how I have heard I described. This is very different to how the events of the same period are taught in schools in Japan. Even here in the US, where, depending on the school district, students can be taught about how horrible genocide/ethnocide of Native Americans, slavery, etc., were, it is almost always in the context of the great unfurling of Freedom (TM) and Progress (TM). I have read commentary from Germany about how pride in being German and celebrating German accomplishments in history is always expressed with caution because of the way history is taught (although in some parts of Germany the reminders of history, like Dachau and the remains of the Berlin Wall, are hard to ignore no matter how little attention you pay in school). I can't think of any other country that approaches education about history in this way. Can you?

Posted by S. Bacchus (# 17778) on :

Professional interest declared here: I teach history. That's my vocation and my passion, as well as the source of my income.

The Santayana quote is problematic in all sorts of ways, and I personally wouldn't use it to justify the study of history to anybody. It has some of the same problematic assumptions as the (almost equally famous) line from Thucydides about history being philosophy teaching by example. The problem is that it's not true. It's just one fucking thing after another, as Alan Bennett said, paraphrasing A.J. Toynbee allegedly quoting Elbert Hubbard.

Were I looking for a short quotation to explain the importance of history, I would turn instead to Cicero

quote:
Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever.

(Orator ad Brutum 120, 46 BCE)

I really do believe that a knowledge of history should allow people to view the world in a more mature age.

Yet I despair when I see people, even otherwise educated people, whose ignorance of even basic history distorts their view of the world.

I despair for this country in particular. When I speak to American schoolchildren (as I have done fairly regularly), or American university graduates, they can almost invariably give a well-informed, if basic, account of their country's constitutional history and how that impacts the present day. They know the Amendments to to the Constitution and perhaps a dozen of the most important Supreme Court Cases (Marbury v. Madison, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, New York Times v. United States, etc). Most Britons cannot give a similar account of their country's legal history, and some will even claim that Britain has no constitution, which must be a shock to those who make their livings studying it as either lawyers or historians. In fairness, the constitutional situation in the UK is considerably more complicated than in the US or in many other countries, but I really worry about the level of ignorance I see British people display about even the most basic aspects of how their (our) country works and how it got that way. Perhaps not as many as one in ten understand the relationship between the Established Church, the Monarchy, and Parliament, which is an issue of some considerable importance in debates over same-sex marriage, for instance. I think that, for the overwhelming majority of people, laws are something that seem to exist 'out there' or which are made up on the spot by politicians. They seem remarkably unaware, and perhaps even uninterested, in how these messy things come about over the course of years and centuries. In a democratic society, that is a serious problem.

We are at a real crisis in the teaching of history in this country. Mr Gove says that students do not learn enough facts about history, and that they should learn more. He is clearly right about this (although he is wrong about all sorts of other things). Others point out that the study of history is not about the accumulation of facts. They are also right. From what I see, the majority of British people (I was going to say 'young people', but it actually isn't a problem confined just to one or two recent generations), have an entirely inadequate knowledge of either basic historical facts or how to interpret these meaningfully.I do find that very worrying indeed.

[ 29. November 2013, 09:56: Message edited by: S. Bacchus ]

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

I suspect one has to start with cod history, simplified and probably biased, because that is the only way of making it accessible enough to lay the foundations to carry on and acquire the tools really to understand it.

I don't think seven-year-olds benefit from, say, perusing the tonnages of corn imports in1836. They have to be given a past that they can imagine themselves living in. Funnily enough, even as an adult, I think if you've lost that, you will cease to enjoy or get anything from history.

Hartley's quote about the past being a foreign country, is true. As years go by, realising the imaginative jump is further than one thought is part of the excitement the history gives.

Posted by sabine (# 3861) on :

I've always been partial to learning about what is left out of official written history. There is a lot to be learned from the oral history of people considered too insignificant to appear in the written accounts or who are not fairly portrayed in those written accounts.

sabine

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:

I don't think seven-year-olds benefit from, say, perusing the tonnages of corn imports in1836. They have to be given a past that they can imagine themselves living in.

Which I got from Rosemary Sutcliff, Geoffrey Trease, Rider Haggard, John Buchan, Mary Renault and every other writer of historical fiction Belfast Central Library afforded.

Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on :

How about Marx's "Those who don't learn from history are forced to repeat it, first as tragedy, then as farce."

Posted by Graham J (# 505) on :

"History repeats itself. Has to. Nobody listens." (Steve Turner)

Posted by The Rogue (# 2275) on :

A problem with learning history at school is that there is a sod of a lot of it. And it gets bigger every day.

Middle Rogueling is currently deciding what subjects to take for GCSE (exams at sixteen years old) and history is one of her choices. She will mainly be looking at Germany from the end of World War One to the end of World War Two and the history of medicine. This seems quite a small sub-set of everything that has ever happened.

I think that what she will get out of it is the ability to research and decide what really happened and why, especially when there are contradictory sources. This will be essential of she is to take the subject any further but it will also be pretty useful in life generally.

At primary school history seems to be about getting children interested in the past - often by appealing to that part of them (us) which is attracted to the gruesome stuff. Then at secondary school they are taught some general timeline facts (1066 and all that) and given some idea of what research is about before they specialise again.

I like historical novels. And some video games set in the past. I have no idea whether they are true to what happened although sometimes I am moved to do a bit of research myself. This isn't often very directed and I end up all over the place which is fun but that's OK because I don't have an exam to study for.

Posted by HughWillRidmee (# 15614) on :

I had little interest in History at school and dropped it at options time. Then, in my mid-twenties (roughly forty years ago) I shared an Edinburgh to Bristol overnight sleeper train compartment with a guy who said he was Professor of History at S. Wales (Bath?) University. We started chatting and he traced the history of what we now call Germany from the recall of the legions in about 400 CE to the 1930s, making a case that the resolutions of the several power conflicts throughout those years led to a situation where, should a right-wing demagogue emerge in the 1920s, WWII would inevitably result.

I don't know if he was right but it sure was fascinating. Before we retired I asked him if Henry Ford was

right

and he replied that there was only one good reason for studying history. Not to avoid repeating errors because the present situation would never match the previous but because the student enjoyed studying history.

His professional opinion - History is for pleasure - not for politicians etc. to misuse to justify their preferences. Seems right to me.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
HughWillRidmee: S. Wales (Bath?)

Er...

Posted by HughWillRidmee (# 15614) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:

quote:
HughWillRidmee: S. Wales (Bath?)
Er...

Yup - can't recall the connection - only across the Severn bridge of course - possibly he said South West and I misheard?

Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :

I'm fond of the history of technology as well as regular history. There's an archaeology saying that nothing is as hard to destroy as a hole in the ground. Written History is far more easily lost, rewritten, misinterpreted or based on original sources that are not necessarily factual.

I do get bored with a list of dates which was a lot of what was taught in the elementary school I went to. Fortunately historical novels lured me into looking deeper on my own.

Posted by JFH (# 14794) on :

quote:
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:

I don't know if he was right but it sure was fascinating. Before we retired I asked him if Henry Ford was

right

and he replied that there was only one good reason for studying history. Not to avoid repeating errors because the present situation would never match the previous but because the student enjoyed studying history.

There's an interesting history to the idea that history does or does not repeat itself. As a good Marxist, Lenin denied it and thought the revolution was a step up and a step away from traditional history. Still, he feared that his revolution would be crushed or that the same mistakes would be made as in the 1905 revolution. The probably best take on whether this is true or not came from a Norwegian professor who wrote that "history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes."

Either way, my take on history is this:
Studying basic history is about not being a stupid fuck. Study history means you'll be able to see through a ton of arguments, because you'll have more precedents to match it with. History is indeed as someone claimed, "the entire case" as in what we have to work with and all of human experience. It's about seeing where human experience and human calculation is or isn't useful. It's as much as anything else a study of humanity and how humans tend to act, to be used to make you more human and think deeper about decisions. Not solely from previous examples of a situation, but from the many examples of the way people have employed their minds to face various problems. It's about socializing ourselves to the past and about making us a tad bit wiser, as well as immunising ourselves a wee bit against the stupidity (in arguments and nature) that doth plague on man.

How much of it should we apply to each student? I don't know. The more the better, if you have good teachers. I don't think it's practically possible for our society to send every student to study it at university, but to dedicate an hour or two each week over twelve years of basic schooling should keep up a reasonable standard of humanity.

Posted by stonespring (# 15530) on :

I'm 28 and American. I went to public schools in different parts of the country and I was rarely if ever asked to memorize dates. I know that rote memorization as an end unto itself is useless, and critical analysis of sources is what history is all about, but I do wish I had been taught a few more dates. If nothing else, they help you to remember what order things happened in and about how far apart in time they were. Of course, power structures dictate what events matter and what periods are named (and when such periods begin an end), but I don't think it's a bad idea to teach students some important dates and other things like the order of presidents/monarchs, etc.

Posted by HughWillRidmee (# 15614) on :

quote:
Originally posted by JFH:
...... It's as much as anything else a study of humanity and how humans tend to act, to be used to make you more human and think deeper about decisions........
How much of it should we apply to each student? I don't know. The more the better, if you have good teachers. I don't think it's practically possible for our society to send every student to study it at university, but to dedicate an hour or two each week over twelve years of basic schooling should keep up a reasonable standard of humanity.

I find myself tempted to concur with much of your post, but there are so many variables involved that I hesitate.

Whose understanding of a reasonable standard of humanity are we talking about?

History being by definition the study of past events it runs into a plethora of human frailties.

There’s memory – which is massively unreliable depending as it does upon unconscious storytelling to fill in the gaps between the occasional snapshots.
There’s confirmation bias.
There’s selective reporting
There’s self/group-justification
There’s humanity's evolved need to see cause and effect where none exists.
There’s the impossibility of knowing how things would have been different but for...........
And there’s lying.

In terms of understanding humanity I suspect that dealing with real people on a daily basis is more valuable than studying the dodgy past – otherwise we run the risk of becoming a Lord Dorwin* don’t we?

I’m sure historians have techniques for attempting to minimise the inaccuracies upon which they draw their opinions but they are a group, are they not, renowned for disagreement amongst themselves.

To me it’s probably safer to treat history as an interesting window on to how humans might sometimes have behaved under certain (probably poorly understood) conditions which could, on balance, be more dangerous if included in consideration of future actions than if excluded.

* Look heah, now, I’ve got the works of all the old mastahs-the gweat ahchaeologists of the past. I wigh them against each other-balance the disagweements-analyse the conflicting statements-decide which is pwobably cowwect-and come to a conclusion. That is the scientific method. At least”-patronizingly-“as I see it. How insuffewably cwude it would be to go to Ahcturus, oah to Sol, foah instance, and blundah about, when the old mastahs have covahed the gwound so much moah effectively than we could possibly hope to do” Lord Dorwin – Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Posted by stonespring (# 15530) on :

Every person has a sense of history and makes decisions based on it, whether they have been taught history in school or not. Look at all the nationalist "histories" out there that justify conflict in the world. Part of the goal of teaching history is to open people's minds to competing narratives of the past, especially the narratives of one's "enemies." Where there is some certainty about what actually happened, though, it is important to dispel conspiracy theories that lead many people to terrible prejudices (look at the anti-semitic conspiracy theories rampant in the modern Islamic world).

Posted by JFH (# 14794) on :

I would add, not least to Hughwillridmee, that history offers a much wider spectrum of people than your average surroundings, and also gives you images of entire societies with the wisdom of hindsight. It gives you a better idea of where to put the outer boundaries for human behaviour or thought and what can be done with the human conditions and society. It probably works especially well in parallel with studies of modern sociology, literature and philosophy. To some degree, it's also a study of the other person's potential shoes.

And yeah, there are a million variables to it, but I think that's also why it teaches you wisdom. Most of those are actually conditions you'll face in real life. Exercise in using them to interpret others with the actual outcomes visible can be quite useful to teach many lessons, not least basic humility before the complexity of the world and how little we will ever know.

I would also add that anything that we measure in the world will by the time we have measured it have become history, and with that comes the many challenges of integrating historical principles of the past with the present. That is of sorts Heisenberg's principle adapted to history. Any OECD report is based on history. So studying history with its many complexities and with the many advertant flaws of our instruments will teach us how present those flaws will be in our own minds as we face the world.

I know, it's not a conclusive picture. However, as you can tell, I see many different uses to it. Not studying any history at all would mean losing the many potential tools that come from it. But yeah, I also see a synthesized idea of history and its complexities as the optimal outcome, rather than an encyclopaedic mind full of dates and kings and classes but without an image of the humanity behind it.

Posted by snowgoose (# 4394) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Rogue:
A problem with learning history at school is that there is a sod of a lot of it. And it gets bigger every day.

That's s large part of the problem, I think. Kids have so much they have to learn just to pass their exams, and a whole lot more if they want to go to a decent university. And university admissions people are much more interested in calculus and physics than they are in history.

As to what it's good for, I would add to the excellent reasons others have given upthread that history gives perspective on current issues and concerns. Things now are not the worst they have ever been. We have made progress on many social problems and there is hope that things will improve even more.

One of my favorite songs from the Austin Lounge Lizards is about this sort of perspective: We've Been Through Some Crappy Times Before.

Posted by Eigon (# 4917) on :

A few years ago, I used to lurk on a teenage forum called Sheroes, which was mainly a fan forum for Tamora Pierce's books (mainly I was there to see what teenage girls were talking about and being enthusiastic about). One kid complained that everyone was making a big thing about "the first woman doctor" or "the first woman in space" - and why was it such a big deal? She had no idea how hard women had had to fight to become doctors or astronauts and so on, because she had no idea of the history. Fortunately there were other kids there who could enlighten her.

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

I think the main point of studying history (and anthropology) is to learn that the things we have grown up assuming were the fundamental order of Nature™ are merely local customs. Unfortunately, history can, and too often is, taught so as to reinforce the idea that the present is just a gloss upon the past.

The most important thing you can ever learn is that much of what seems like common sense to you is raving lunacy to somebody else, and vice versa.

Posted by The Rogue (# 2275) on :

And, of course, history is written by the winner.

Posted by Og: Thread Killer (# 3200) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Rogue:
And, of course, history is written by the winner.

You are assuming that the understanding of recent events can be codified into one view and inoculated from other views.

A good historian can get through all that to provide another view point.

I would stretch that saying into two parts:

a)history is written by those who have the time and money to do so.

b) history is understood and adopted by those who have the inclination to discover, deduce and implement.

****

My history degree was at a university where the faculty focused on providing a full historiographical view. It was the best preparation for life doing stuff in the church, in the arts, in business, in politics and as a family I could ever had. I still get a shiver of joy whenever I figure out the slant somebody is coming at an issue, without the aid of a sledgehammer.

History allowed me to help over 10 000 people find jobs.

It allowed me to be a better Dad and husband.

It allowed me to sit in here without tearing my hair out about EVIL.

I thank God for my history degree every few days.

UBB.classic^TM 6.5.0