I don't get it...

history is the written record
prehistory is an educated guess

the best way to understand history is this..

take an event

what came before it
what happened after it
what were the ramifications of the event ie what came out of it, you can look up to present day.

when you do this you realise that history is not some dusty book with tenuous links to the here and now but affects you, your family and society in general.

good luck !

 

Let me guess -- forty percent of the grade was an oral exam.

 

Recommended reading: Loewen, James W.,"Lies My Teacher Told Me", The New Press, New York, 1995, 372 pages. A critical analysis of twelve American history textbooks in use in United States high schools in the 1980's. In the introduction, Loewen writes,

Even though the books bulge with detail, even though the courses are so busy they rarely reach 1960, our teachers and our textbooks still leave out most of what we need to know about the American past. Some of the factoids they present are flatly wrong or unverifiable. In sum, startling errors of omission and distortion mar American histories. ​

Cases made by Loewen include textbook treatment of Columbus and the Spanish conquest, Indian wars, slavery, racism and American imperialism under Woodrow Wilson, and that's just the first half of the book. However, Loewen is definitely one-sided in his presentations, particularly with regard to the Indian wars.

 

A teacher of mine recommended me that book once, but i have yet to read it.

I study archaeology so I'm always immersed in history.

 

We learn history so we dont repeat our mistakes. By expanding our experience to the lives of men and women in different times and places, history teaches us valuable things both about others and ourselves.

 

deleted by author

 

We learn history because we as a species have the unique ability to record and remember our thoughts, look at cave paintings depicting hunts from 9,000 years ago, the fact we can do this is amazing, to know what happened at the moment in time instead of just coming up with a big ? when thinking about it. And aside from the whole history repeats itself, it's the fact everything in life right now is based on something that happened before, and not just in the past century or 2, hell think how much all of western civilization owes to the ancient Greeks and the Roman empire.

And it's also the fact so much of the present could totally be altered by 1 event in history, what if the confederacy won the battle of Gettysburg, what if the franks had lost the battle of Poitiers and European history was dominated by Islam instead of Christianity. What if Ceasar was never killed, or if Caesar never existed and the Roman empire instead just remained the Roman republic. History and the present can totally be determined by 1 day, 1 battle, 1 person.


Also, when people say there's certain things we shouldn't have to learn about, what do those include?

 

You can learn it when it repeats, of course. That's called pregnancy.

 

History repeats itself all the time.
It's doing it right now.
compare the invasion and occupation of the phillipines to the war in iraq.

If you learn your history, you'll have an idea of what to be prepared for, and can adjust/plan/live easier.
If you don't, that's fine with me too, because it makes it easier for people like me to exploit you.

 

I agree with you. I think it's useless to know, but I'm not complaining, becuause it interests me

 

Which invasion of the Philippines? Prior to 1521?
1521 (Ferdinand Magellan)?
1565 (Miguel Lopez de Legazpi)?
1898 (Dewey/Merritt/Anderson/Greene/Arthur MacArthur)?
1941 (Masaharu Homma)?
1944 (Douglas MacArthur)?
And which war in Iraq? the Mongols? Turks? Persians? British? Iranis? Americans? Americans once more? Or is there someone I forgot?

Or, just possibly, is nothing repeating itself except inside your head?

And if you want to exploit me, you'll have to go to the end of the line.

 

Alot of people think like you, don't worry, you're not the only one. I think history is interesting and I've got friends which find it useless and mention exactly why, just like you explained.

 

To the OP:

I work with people like you. They are university engineers. Not all of them are like that,but nearly all. They went to places like Virginia Tech (good school), Clemson, NC State, Old Dominion University, and the like.
They were the ones in high school who made straight A's in math and the sciences, but did not give a shit about history or literature. Felt the Humanities were a waste of time. I know this because they periodically express it. When I try to reason with them about the good of the other subjects they politely listen and look at me as if I am misinformed. Aside from the couple of Christians in their ranks at work, they do not give a shit about religion or God, either (I am not talking about the atheists among them).
To put things in balance, there are a good many on the other side of the fence who loathe the sciences, asking what good is physics and greater math in everyday life. In my early forties I took a placement test at the local community college. Scored a 37 in math. I took Algebra I at night to bone up on my academic weakness and let my inertia take me from there. Much to my surprise (and delight), I found myself in Calculus II a few semesters later. While math is not my subject, I was able to become proficient at it. More than that, I think it helped to round me out.

cheers,

JKHolman

 

The OP has not posted since 10/27/07

 

Awesome, dirtydog! I'm always on the lookout for a new Kindle book to buy/download/speedread.

Almost all my education was on my own-even though the advanced CA correspondence courses I took in our tiny mission school were very advanced compared to most of the US.

When the boxes of books arrived at our Haiti mission in September, I'd sneak in a school window and read all my books for the year before school opened in October. I'd see my brother off in another dark corner doing the same but each pretended not to see the other.

My grandmother would mail us her old National Geographic and Post magazines and sent my siblings and I nature books for our birthdays. I read everything in the house, on the mission, all the nearby missions, and when we were in the US when I was nine I was shocked at my elementary school library..entire walls of BOOOOOOOKS!!!!

But that was nothing to the first time my parents dropped me off at a small town library. I couldn't believe my eyes. I could even pick a genre!
I love reading history. I know from years of substitute teaching that school textbooks try to hard not to offend anyone, so teach little truth.

 

Thanks, genius.

 

Yep, many thanks. That is the sort of history that can stay there.

 

better leave home while you know everything kid

 

The OP may not have posted recently - but that does not make the discussion pointless.

The question IS a question that many people ask, from time to time; and the answers here are valuable.

Personally, I don't hold with the "history repeats itself therefore we need to study it" point of view.

Recent history - and by this I mean everything from the 17th century onwards - still resonates in modern times. Much that we see in the world around us is the way it is because of the historical processes that have led to the world being the way it is. If you want to understand why, say, the Jews and the Palestinians have such difficulty living happily side by side, then you gotta have a little bit of history. Ditto if you want to know why it is easy to pass laws controlling the ownership of guns in Britain but not in America.

But ... that is only a partial answer.

For me, the importance of History is that it is all about people. The study of human beings. How they think, how they behave ... and how this has changed over time.

We interact with human beings all the time ... and anything that helps us in our understanding of other people, why they can sometimes think and act differently from us, what they are about ... such a subject has to be intrinsically worthwhile.

 

I did not mean to indicate the discussion was pointless, only that the OP was no longer around to respond. Sorry if I offended anyone.