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parrhesia  1yr ago (parrhesia.substack.com)   2970 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.

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Depends entirely on the teacher.

I've had some classes where a brain dead octogenarian drooled revisionist bullshit about 'States rights' out of their pie hole, and really excellent classes where a dude who refuses to wear anything but shorts, t shirts and flipflops forces everyone to pick a side in the revolution and argue that perspective for 15 minutes before switching instead of assigning homework.

It's the difference between "history as mythopoetic identity formation tool" and "history as window-on-human-nature."

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