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parrhesia  1yr ago (parrhesia.substack.com)   2982 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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As an example: kids are taught that the American Revolution was a noble effort by our founding fathers to liberate the colonies from a tyrant, thereby providing its people with rights. They are told this to be spared from the more grounded idea that the American Revolution was a bid by the colonial intelligentsia to gain power by waging war against their rulers, and that the Constitution was something they made up to rile colonists up despite local colonial legislatures and parliament already trending towards whatever it proposed at the time.

Oh, come off it. First, we start kids off with ABC, not with "War and Peace", when teaching them to read. Second, your "more grounded idea" is every bit as subjective a preferred interpretation as the noble revolution bit. "Da elitez wanned powah for theyselves and riled up iggnerant bumpkinz' is an ideological statement, too.

"The Constitution was something they made up" - yes, most foundational documents are like that. So are laws, and governments, and every field of human endeavour: it starts with people trying to set down what it is they think and what that means. The Constitution did not descend from heaven borne by the Archangel Gabriel, impeccable and inerrant in every word.

Were the local elite and powerbrokers trying to grab power and influence for themselves? Yes. Were there also some who were motivated by idealism? Yes. Ferment was in the air; this was 'the Age of Enlightenment' and the American revolutionaries and young nation sought out support over the years from France and other sympathetic ears. Thomas Paine was eagerly read by all classes. Even if "the colonial intelligentsia" only meant to fake up an excuse for a power grab, their creation took on a life of its own and inspired and influenced ideas about liberty, private rights, and what it means to be a citizen instead of a subject.

This is what history is and should be; the examination of ideas, the tracing out of influences, and how arguments can be constructed and defended or critiqued about our interpretation of the past and our view of what is happening right now.

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