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parrhesia  1yr ago (parrhesia.substack.com)   3280 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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These classes impress upon children the idealistic, shallow notion that individuals - not geopolitical trends and perpetual power imbalances - are responsible for shaping the course of history

This is the annoying structuralist vs great man theory debate. Clearly the answer is both. Kant, jesus, napoleon, von neumann - clearly these people were products of their time, and were deeply shaped by their intellectual milleus and material situations - but if any of them were shot at age 10, history would've played out very differently in many ways. And both the individuals and structures make each other, such that it's difficult to even separate them.

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