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parrhesia  1yr ago (parrhesia.substack.com)   3025 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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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.

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