2 ms·

Makes me wonder: Are we failing to teach how to apply history to present-day problems, or do we as a society really value history so little?

• Chris2048 5y ago
  What does this mean? I thought (Marxian) historical-analysis was a debunked pursuit?
  • sho_hn 5y ago
    I'm wondering why there aren't more jobs for historians outside academia, I guess.
    • cfmcdonald 5y ago
      Large companies used to have company historians and company archivists. Some still do. There were probably never very many of those, though. The new policy seems to be to throw the (digital) archives down the memory hole to avoid lawsuits.
• lotsofpulp 5y ago
  The application of history to the vast majority of people's lives is probably pretty low on the list of priorities. Shelter, food, water, air, income, healthcare, childcare, vacations, and then maybe history comes into play as a component of entertainment.
  • munificent 5y ago
    Ironically, a failure to learn from history is often what leads to large-scale failures to provide for those other priorities.
  • AlotOfReading 5y ago
    To contextualize, I'm an archaeologist by education and consider that a subfield of 'history'. Most people have incredibly strong attachments to (specific bits) of history. It's often be inseparable from culture, national identity, and religion. However, it's difficult to justify that funding politically over things like building another warship (to keep us safe!), building a supercomputer (to keep us innovative!), or subsidizing corporate entities (to save jobs!). There's also no commercial market for building national identity. Accordingly, most funding comes out of relatively small culture/arts budgets that don't have to answer directly to constituents, except for a very few things that meet the incredibly high bar of direct political support like the national parks and pyramids. But if you're interested in how humans have adapted to climate change in the past, or how to design a resilient society, or how pandemics spread, you're going to need historical studies at some point.
• chmod600 5y ago
  Stories are incredibly valuable to humans, on the same level as survival. People see themselves continuously as playing a role in a story than spans millenia. That's what "identity" is really about, and it underlies war, crime, achievement, religion, raising of families, etc. Historians could be the leaders here, but for whatever reason they are not. Historians haven't put themselves in a position where they could guide human stories for society overall. So do they have potential value? Yes. But either they aren't able to provide it, or we aren't able to accept it. Instead we have media narratives, which are a sad substitute.