site banner
parrhesia  1yr ago (parrhesia.substack.com)   3000 thread views

History Classes Are Mostly Useless

parrhesia.substack.com

SS: Americans are rather ignorant about history. Moral reasoning by historical analogy is bad. Historical examples can be misleading for making predictions. These facts suggest that the utility of history courses is overestimated. In fact, they are mostly useless.

-4
Top Bottom New Old Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I think a more unstructured education system where we just gather a bunch of history that is beautiful and let students pursue their interests would be more ethical. If it has to be structured, it needs to improve students critical thinking about the future, curent events, geopolitics, etc. I am skeptical that this is the case to any large extent.

we just gather a bunch of history that is beautiful

And who decides what is beautiful? We've had the criticised Foundation Myths version of history, where all the past was gleaming and glorious and all our heroes were flawless. Then we swung round to feet of clay, all muck and misery, racism and sexism forever.

I don't want somebody's idea of "beautiful" history. I never liked the "in the Matriarchal past, all was beer and skittles and then the awful men invented Patriarchy" version of history that some strains of loopy feminism mixed with Wicca produced in the 70s, and I don't want a modernised 21st century version of hippie history. I want the bad parts and the good parts, the entire human mess of it, the gold and the dung. Like Lenny sang, "You don't want to lie, not to the young".

And if we give them only the beautiful history, how then will they feel when they find out the parts we hid from them? How will they ever trust a teaching voice again? The Horrible History books, way back in the mists of time, took as their selling point "the gory bits they don't teach you in school" and the entire production has been immensely popular ever since.

I think a more unstructured education system where we just gather a bunch of history that is beautiful and let students pursue their interests would be more ethical.

This worked for moldbug or scott, but does it really work for the 'average american', or even the 95th percentile american? Looking at popular consumption of history, or popular culture generally ... 10 TOP HISTORY FAILS with a stablediffusion of lincoln soyfacing. Forcing students to read books they don't care about and fill out multiple choice questions is dumb, it keeps them from developing will to do things and solve problems in their own interests - but just letting them read and write about whatever they want is both impossible to implement and wouldn't work much better.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats