Why history?

I don’t see too many students questioning why they should study Psychology, or Sociology, or even Economics and Government. However, a constant question that seems to arise is “why do I have to take history” – or as history teacher Mr. Ryan said to Bill and Ted in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, “All you boys seemed to have learned is that Caesar is a ‘salad dressing dude’", and “What you're telling me, essentially, is that Napoleon was a short, dead dude?”

Maybe it’s time to look for an answer.

The AHA (American Historical Association) states: “History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty. There are many ways to discuss the real functions of the subject—as there are many different historical talents and many different paths to historical meaning. All definitions of history's utility, however, rely on two fundamental facts.” Those two facts are: History Helps Us Understand People and Societies and History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be. For the complete essay, click here.

The History Guide: A Student’s Guide To The Study of History tells us: Well first off, by studying history you can study anything for the simple reason that everything has a history: ideas, wars, numbers, races, windsurfing, coal miners, pencils, motherhood and yes, even toilet-training. I first began to appreciate the study of history as an undergraduate studying political philosophy at Boston University. I was pretty keen on Plato, Aquinas, Dante, Hobbes, Locke, Godwin, Marx, Mill and a host of other "greats." But what I soon discovered was that my lack of understanding of history, i.e. the actual historical context in which these writers conceived and executed their theoretical work, made my understanding of their philosophy one-sided. Sure, I knew what they had to say about liberty, or the proletariat, or monarchy or the franchise. But what was the historical environment that gave rise to their ideas? Ideas are not akin to balloons hanging from the ceiling of Clio's den, waiting to be retrieved by a Marx, a Mill or a Plato. Ideas have a history. They undergo a process of development. They change, are modified, are distributed or are forgotten only to reappear years, decades or perhaps even centuries later. For the complete essay, click here.

Radford University claims “the study of the past helps lead to greater personal insight and comprehension of each person’s place in the grand sweep of the human story.”

Perhaps the most multimedia of answers is found on TeacherTube – a show well worth showing at the start of the semester. For the video, click here.

There are, of course, many other reasons – building concerned and involved citizens, knowing the past leads to not repeating the same mistakes in the future, the law says we have to. Each of those reading this could probably add to the list.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be so much ‘why’ study history but ‘how do’ we study history?

Of course, as Ted said in : “Thanks to great leaders, such as Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, and Socratic method . . . the world is full of history.”

Essential Question: How do we express to students the significance of history?