Studying History is important because it helps us understand our past, which in turn allows us to understand our present. If we want to know how and why our world is the way it is today, we have to look to History for answers. People often say that ‘History repeats itself,’ but if we study the successes and failures of the past, we may, ideally, be able to learn from mistakes and avoid repeating them in the future.
History helps us understand people and societies
History offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies behave. If we relied exclusively on current data, it would handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials?
The past causes the present, and thus, the future. Any time we try to know why something happened—whether a shift in political party dominance in the Congress, a major change in the teenage suicide rate, or a war in the Balkans or the Middle East—we have to look for factors that took shape earlier. Often, we need to look to the past to identify the causes of change. Only through studying history can we grasp how things change; only through History can we begin to comprehend the factors that cause change; and only through History can we understand what elements of an institution or a society persist despite change.
The importance of History in our lives
History that is well told is beautiful. Many historians who most appeal to readers know the importance of dramatic and skillful writing—as well as of accuracy. Biography and military History appeal in part because of the tales they contain. History as art and entertainment serves a real purpose. Stories that reveal how people and societies have actually functioned prompt thoughts about human experience in other times and places. The ways people in distant ages constructed their lives—involves a sense of beauty and excitement, and ultimately another perspective on human life and society.
History contributes to moral understanding
History also provides a terrain for moral contemplation. Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the past allows a student of History to test his or her own moral sense. Moral values are honed against some real complexities that individuals have faced in difficult settings. People who have weathered adversity not just in some work of fiction, but in real, historical circumstances can provide inspiration. ‘History teaches by example’ is one phrase that describes this study not only of certifiable heroes, the great men and women of history who successfully worked through moral dilemmas, but also of more ordinary people who provide lessons in courage, diligence, or constructive protest.
History provides identity
History also helps provide identity, and this is one of the reasons all modern nations encourage its teaching in some form. Historical data prove how families, groups, institutions and whole countries were formed and about how they have evolved while retaining cohesion.
Studying History is essential for good citizenship
Studying History helps us understand how recent, current, and prospective changes that affect the lives of citizens have emerged and what causes are involved. More important, studying History encourages habits of mind that are vital for responsible public behavior, whether as a national or community leader, an informed voter, a petitioner, or a simple observer.
What skills does the study of History develop?
The ability to assess evidence.
The study of History builds experience in dealing with and assessing various kinds of evidence—the sorts of evidence historians use in shaping the most accurate pictures of the past that they can.
The ability to assess conflicting interpretations.
After all, History is an interpretation of data. Learning History means gaining some skill in sorting through diverse, often conflicting interpretations.
Experience in assessing past examples of change.
Assessing past examples of change is vital to understand the change in society today—it's an essential skill in what we are regularly told is our ‘ever-changing world.’
It is true that historians do not perform heart transplants, improve highway design, or arrest criminals. In a society that quite correctly expects education to serve useful purposes, the functions of History can seem more difficult to define than those of engineering or medicine. The fact is History, is very useful, actually indispensable, but the products of historical study are less tangible, sometimes less immediate, than those that stem from some other disciplines.
To sum up, History gives access to the laboratory of human experience. When we study it reasonably well, we acquire some usable habits of mind, as well as some basic data about the forces that affect our own lives. It is then that we emerge with relevant skills and an enhanced capacity for informed citizenship, critical thinking, and simple awareness.
I hope, my rendition of history in The Curse of Nader Shah: The Rise and Fall of a Tyrant finds your favour.
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