Why Study History?

Argumentative Essay # 113698

Education > Curriculum
History

Why Study History?

A discussion on why history should be studied.

1,082 words () | 6 sources | MLA | 2008 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the reasons why history is so often marginalized these days and why people study history. The author argues that history is more than a pursuit of leisure and personal intellectual development, history is actually very useful and indispensable and can function as a collective mirror on humanity's shared experience.

From the Paper:

" The study of history is outmoded. As a discipline, history ranks among the least applicable of education's ancien regime, those institutional relics of an age when men thought learning was more than a practical skill set; rather, an exercise in personal development. History won't teach you how to build a rocket, nor is it ever likely to make you a great deal of money on Wall Street, and a thorough knowledge of the social background of the Hundred Years War isn't going to program your computer. No, history is dead for all practical purposes; at least, if that's how you define practical."

Sample of Sources Used:

Bender, Thomas. ""Venturesome and Cautious": American History in the 1990s." The Journal of American History, Vol. 81, No. 3, The Practice of American History: A Special Issue, December, 1994: 992-1003.
Columbia University, Department of History. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/history/ (accessed September 3, 2008).
Smithsonian Institute. "Annual Report 2007." http://www.si.edu/opa/annualrpts/2007report/Smithsonian2007.pdf (accessed September 3, 2008).
Stearns, Peter K. Why Study History? 1998. http://www.historians.org/pubs/free/WhyStudyHistory.htm (accessed September 3, 2008).
"The New York Times Archives." The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D0CEFDB1338EE32A25753C1A96E9C946896D6CF (accessed September 3, 2008).