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parrhesia  1yr ago (parrhesia.substack.com)   2985 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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If you wish people to understand current events they must understand the events that preceded them. It's really that simple. How can one understand what's happening in Ukraine without at least a little knowledge of WWI and WWII and Soviet Russia?

I put forth that understanding current events, at least a little bit, is important in democracies (but not dictatorships) because citizens must decide on representatives who will vote on many things having to do with current events - if they understand nothing of the context, they can't understand the issue, they can't make an informed vote, and democracy becomes more superficial.

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