Why Is History a Core Subject in Schools?

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Comment by Kim Jones on June 8, 2010 at 12:48pm

But I don't think WWI was inevitable, that's my problem, if you like. There were alternatives that people might have availed themselves of at the time. Some great powers might not have allied. Somebody might not have been assassinated. In fact, if proponents of parallel universes are correct then there are a great many universes in which WWI never even happened. All outcomes happen somewhere in the multiverse, even a few good ones, by golly. Why do we chuck our particular set of outcomes up onto a pedestal called Historical Truth when it could easily, so easily have been otherwise? There are an infinity of histories spawned at every moment.

Comment by Gijs van Beeck Calkoen on June 7, 2010 at 11:53am

I am sure you can take lessons from the past, at least to obtain some sensitivity as which aspects could play a role. F.e. chains of multiple cause-effect relations which made WO I inevitable.

But one has to be very careful. Whenever a comparision is made between the past and now. What to think about: "Leave Afghanistan, because also the Russians lost there"

In this kind of situations I use the CoRT-technique COMPARE. In what are the circumstances the same, and what differ? Then: is the comparision still justifiable?

Comment by Franis on June 1, 2010 at 9:20am

Sometimes reading some of the alternate history science fiction authors (such as Harry Turtledove) help a mind that has been seeped in history to imagine other outcomes - and see ahead from now. Exercising the skill of imagination (even if it's by reading near-future science fiction authors) works better than studying actual interpretations of history. The reason it does work better is because we practice and are challenged to imagine and predict what will happen next before it does.

Frank Connolly and I agree. Studying what has already happened doesn't encourage this skill. Thus the old saying: Hindsight is 20-20. What makes you think that because you're looking back at something, it will give a "better" perspective? Hindsight isn't 20-20. It can be just as twisted looking back. We're attempting to anthropomorphize ourselves. We take for granted we can second-guess what someone else experienced from another era and culture.

Another contributing factor is how libraries will cull books that aren't being read. Every sixty years or so the books themselves wear out. This gives enough time passing so that similar scams come around again, tailored to a different era. The people reading the books and learning something from history are actually those who want to take advantage of others! Those who want to build constructive have to invent on the front end.

Wonder what will happen when books now become digitized and won't wear out? (But now master copies of books can be edited.)

Was fascinated on the timing of how once most of the history books analyzing the collapse of the banks from the late 1920s boom era had disappeared from people's radar; they were tossed aside and considered ignored, outdated, "boring old tomes"... It's a thirty year boom or bust cycle, just outside of the timing of the length of each generation.

Comment by Frank Connolly on May 31, 2010 at 2:47pm

We can look to histories as one possible indicator of the future, nothing more. Even if all conditions of some historical period were replicated with exactness, outcomes differ every time.

Even if we knew we had somehow captured an accurate historical perspective on some time or issue, we cannot fail but to look back at it from a contemporary perspective and thereby change it's colour. I suspect many things we currently look back upon with harsh judgement based on today's lenses would have been viewed in a very different (and more relevant) light at the time.

Hindsight does not lead to foresight.

Comment by Kim Jones on May 31, 2010 at 11:36am

Wil

the greatest danger concerning the addiction to History that I describe is contained in your statement

People somehow don't learn or forget their mistake and repeat the same mistake over again.


It has never been clear to me at all how studying history is somehow going to remedy this. You could just as easily point out that - due to the mechanism of mind (de Bono's core idea) - the more we study history, the more we are condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Due to the story-telling impulse I have described, it is highly likely that at each and every recount of an historical episode, we get further and further away from history itself and closer and closer to our own emotional need for the past to be a certain way in relation to the present.

Do not forget that History is taught mainly via language. It is a language-dependent endeavour. Language is, as Edward says "an encyclopedia of ignorance" and all the interpreting of sources, both primary and secondary and all of the "scholarship" that goes into historical thinking is a dance of words and semantics.

In fact people don't need to understand what went on in the past. The need for this is highly exaggerated by academics for the simple reason that historians secure their continued employment as teachers, academics and wordsmiths. We need to design the future. The continual wondering about what Winston Churchill would have done in this present situation, or what Margaret Thatcher might have done in relation to this or that is totally, totally counter-productive in this sense.

The world is changing every moment. Historical studies freeze our thinking along the lines of strategies taken in a different time and place as though those contexts were still with us.

Never mind the fact that the strategies undertaken in the past that we are so riveted by now were themselves probably piecemeal, "flying by the seat of your pants" type measures that didn't even represent the best thinking that might have been used at that time.

Does anyone honestly think today that dropping two Atomic bombs on Japanese cities in 1945 represented the best, most creative solution to the problem of ending the war?

So let's forget all about this sorry episode and move ON. It's incredibly easy to think of other historical episodes that command legions of scholars' attention but which in fact represent some of the WORST thinking that might have been employed.

I invite people to submit examples.

Comment by Phil Bachmann on March 13, 2010 at 9:32am

Hi Robert,

I agree that teaching questioning as a fundamental skill is likely to be more effective than trying to cull aspects of the curriculum.

Here is an example of how CoRT does it: http://www.cortthinking.com/cort/5/questions

Your book looks promising, by the way. I will put it on my list of books to buy.

Comment by Kim Jones on March 9, 2010 at 8:32pm

Thinking Skills I (CoRT, HoM)

Thinking Skills II (Parallel Thinking, Six Hat Thinking)

Thinking Skills III (DATT, de Bono Code)


All we need after that is

English

Math

Science

History can be an elective subject for those who wish to pursue it, along with Music, Art and other humanities subject.

It would need to be more honestly packaged though: Music History, Political History, History of Warfare, History of Ideas and Innovation etc.

It should always be defined what the History we are looking at is about in terms of content. The arrogance of having a subject called 'History' provides a vehicle for all kinds of devious nonsense as we have elsewhere described in this thread. Usually what is left out in such a subject that purports to cover 'everything that matters' is glaringly conspicuous in its absence.

Comment by Sinclair McLay on March 9, 2010 at 4:27pm

So what should the 'core' subjects of education be ?

Comment by Gijs van Beeck Calkoen on March 9, 2010 at 2:59pm

Great thinking direction, to explore: We turn away from History so that we are not condemned to repeat the errors of the past ( Kim Jones on March 5, 2010 at 10:02am)

Comment by Kim Jones on March 9, 2010 at 6:53am

It is a provocative post, Martin. This is the home of Lateral Thinking. We do a lot of provocation and challenge thinking around here. I don't think there are too many people that open their mouths on this site that want to defend any kind of status quo - certainly not in education.

Look at how screwed up the world is, Martin. It's the fault of educators who taught the wrong stuff.

All subjects forming the so-called "core" of a teaching curriculum should be required to justify on an ongoing basis their right to pride of place. Don't you think so? I am attacking the blind - almost religious - assumption that teaching certain subjects is eternally good for us. It's nonsense. The universe is changing and evolving and so are we. How can we be so sure that the subjects that merely have the longest tradition of teaching are the ones we should always teach and that these are continuing to serve students' needs?

If we are going to expend so much teach time on these subjects, then we must be sure that they optimally serve students' needs. They don't. I'm only taking on History at this time - don't get me started on English and Maths...

You may have forgotten, or perhaps you were not aware, that we here (the committed de Bono enthisiasts) generally do not believe that Thinking can be taught via the content of some other subject. We hold firmly to de Bono's line that Thinking must be taught as a subject in itself. The reason is that any successful teacher of thinking knows that the primary focus is on the processes of thinking and not the content of the thinking.

Any old content will usually do, if you need stuff to think "about". The great danger of trying to teach explicit, transferable skills in thinking via History is that one keeps getting side-tracked by the high interest-quotient of the content so the skills are not taught while everyone enjoys a good story (again).

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