Why does learning from the past matter

Historical training is not, however, an indulgence; it applies directly to many careers and can clearly help us in our working lives. Why study history? The answer is because we virtually must, to gain access to the laboratory of human experience. When we study it reasonably well, and so acquire some usable habits of mind, as well as some basic data about the forces that affect our own lives, we emerge with relevant skills and an enhanced capacity for informed citizenship, critical thinking, and simple awareness.

The uses of history are varied. Studying history can help us develop some literally "salable" skills, but its study must not be pinned down to the narrowest utilitarianism. Some history—that confined to personal recollections about changes and continuities in the immediate environment—is essential to function beyond childhood.

Some history depends on personal taste, where one finds beauty, the joy of discovery, or intellectual challenge. Between the inescapable minimum and the pleasure of deep commitment comes the history that, through cumulative skill in interpreting the unfolding human record, provides a real grasp of how the world works.

Through clear graphs and informal prose, readers will find hard data, practical advice, and answers to common questions about the study of history and the value it affords to individuals, their workplaces, and their communities in Careers for History Majors.

You can purchase this pamphlet online at Oxford University Press. For questions about the pamphlet, please contact Karen Lou klou historians. For bulk orders contact OUP directly.

What do history students learn? With the help of the AHA, faculty from around the United States have collaborated to create a list of skills students develop in their history coursework. This list, called the "History Discipline Core," is meant to help students understand the skills they are acquiring so that they can explain the value of their education to parents, friends, and employers, as well as take pride in their decision to study history. Corey Prize Raymond J.

Cunningham Prize John H. Klein Prize Waldo G. Marraro Prize George L. Mosse Prize John E. Palmegiano Prize James A. Schmitt Grant J. Beveridge Award Recipients Albert J. Corey Prize Recipients Raymond J.

Cunningham Prize Recipients John H. Fagg Prize Recipients John K. Franklin Jameson Award Recipients J. Marraro Prize Recipients George L.

Palmegiano Prize Recipients James A. Why Study History? Stearns People live in the present. History Helps Us Understand People and Societies In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies behave. The Importance of History in Our Own Lives These two fundamental reasons for studying history underlie more specific and quite diverse uses of history in our own lives.

On a fundamental level, learning from history is important because it helps us be better both as individuals and as contributors to society. Part of the reason teaching history thoughtfully is so important, is because it is often nuanced and complex. It demands that we think beyond our current frame of reference to see other points of view. When discussing sensitive topics like war, racism or genocide, students are challenged to understand multiple perspectives at the same time. In addition to supporting future job skills and building empathy , history lessons help students see what it looks like to do good in the world.

Positioning everyday people as heroes can prove that anyone is capable of accomplishing great things. These role models give students tangible examples to aspire to, says Ph. Nelson Mandela, for example, is an example of someone who is admired and can be emulated, van Doorn writes. How did he accomplish all that he did? How can we recreate his philosophies and behavior to create a better world? These are the kinds of questions that meaningful history lessons allow students to explore.

History can also holds lessons about science, technology and the world around us. For example, modern green architecture plans are often based off of ancient layouts, explains Kara Masterson at the online compendium, Realm of History. Broadening the concept of humanity can also help us understand shared struggles and victories, which can in turn build empathy.

When students start to see historical figures as real human beings with similar and different struggles, they begin to cultivate a sense of self-awareness. This allows them to connect life lessons from others to their own daily experience. This happens, for example, with the achievement gap. The achievement gap asks if students are achieving X. Instead, it might be more useful to look at the relevance gap, which asks if X is going to matter to the lives students are likely to lead. That knowledge goes somewhere.

Mastering quadratic equations is challenging, but those equations are not so lifeworthy. The typical math curriculum is a good example of how we want learners to move toward expertise in a subject, with little regard for usefulness.

In fact, expert amateurism works great, he says, in most of what we do in our lives — raising children, filing taxes, appreciating art, understanding insurance rates, or dealing with our own health care. Perkins is very clear that expertise in a specific field is not bad; in fact, he encourages it and assumes it will happen at the college or university level.

So we come back to the question: What is worth learning? In his book, Perkins promises that he is not going to answer that question, at least not in a tidy way. Perkins says there would be no way to create a definitive list because there are lots of things worth learning at any given time or for a specialized career or even simply because we enjoy learning. However, wagering that tomorrow will be pretty much like yesterday does not seem to be a very good bet today.

Perhaps we need a different vision of education, a vision that foregrounds educating for the unknown as much as for the known. This is a vote for a richer form of achievement. We evaluate those tests. Numerous other studies have confirmed and expanded upon this finding. And it was Metcalfe and colleagues who showed that the more certain you are of your wrong answer, the better you will learn the right one after being corrected.

Why is this? By placing electroencephalogram caps on subjects as they play video games or do other tasks, scientists have identified specific signals in the brain linked to making errors. A second wave, called error positivity Pe for short , comes 50 to milliseconds later and is believed to reflect conscious attention to the error, usually followed by an effort to avoid repeating it.

Past research had shown that these signals relate to academic performance. People with a fixed mindset as measured on a standard questionnaire tend to see errors as signs that they are not good at something.

Those with a growth mindset see them as signs they need to work harder. Schroder theorized that people with a growth mindset would have a stronger Pe signal following an error. This proved to be true in studies with both children and adults.

Just as important, growth-minded people raised their game more in the wake of an error. How do these psych lab results translate to the messier world of the classroom? A number of researchers are attempting to answer that question with studies that more closely mimic educational situations or by conducting research within schools. Carnegie Mellon psychologist Robert Siegler, an expert on how children learn math, has delved deeply into the best way to give feedback on student errors.

He has shown, for instance, that asking third and fourth graders to explain how someone got the wrong answer and also how someone got the right answer is enormously effective — more so than just asking the child to explain the correct procedure, as teachers so often do. You really have to undermine the roots of the misconception as well as strengthen the correct conception.

Metcalfe is exploring that approach in an experiment with eighth-grade math teachers at the Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science and Engineering — a New York City public school affiliated with Columbia University.