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parrhesia  1yr ago (parrhesia.substack.com)   3278 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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How can you identify patterns, if not through learning facts and dates? And of course, the facts you do learn (because nobody can learn all of them) are going to strongly influence your conclusions.

If anything this is the "true" reason to learn history (to not repeat mistakes of the past).

Depends on what you consider a mistake - was open immigration a mistake? Decolonization? The Town and Country Planning Act of 1947?

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