Categories:
A Recipe for War, Analysis of History, Current Events, Disinformation, Military History, Russo-Ukrainian War
Tags:
Connections to the Past, Historians in History, Understanding the Past, Weaponizing History, Historical Education, #A Recipe for War, #Ukraine, #War
April 7, 2022
The bombs fell out of the clear blue sky, without ever reaching the ground. “Why do we have to teach history? It already happened, so it doesn’t matter.” A teacher at my high school casually made this remark, intending for it to be nothing more than a joke. Yet, for me, these two sentences managed to summarize one of the most devastating and insidious phenomena currently unfolding in the collective unconscious of our citizens. Its quiet but enormous progress permeates through our educational system, and from there, it spreads to affect the very fabric of our society. It moves as slowly, maybe even more slowly, than pahoehoe lava but is just as destructive. If left unchecked, it will be exploited by future tyrants, as has been done in countries worldwide. What is this menace? It is nothing less than a declining interest in History contributing to a decrease in the importance and size of history programs in schools, combined with growing misconceptions about the subject that many have, unfortunately, come to accept.
This brewing storm has been developing for some time. Even when I was applying for high school, it was already manifesting itself everywhere. While being interviewed at one high school, I asked the admissions officer about the types of classes offered in the history department. This question stunned him, and after some hesitation, he told me that there were very few history classes left in the first place. The history department at the school had suffered more severely than any other in a recent budget cut. This was anything but a one-off. At another school, a lack of interest and funds led to the cancellation of its European History and most World History Courses. The school used some leftover resources to create a new History of San Francisco Course, but it used most of the money to help save other classes from being cut. As a result, that school only had to cut four courses, all of which were in the history department.
It became clear to me that History was increasingly being sidelined and treated as an unnecessary subject that could be cut to save other “core” programs by high schools and middle schools nationwide. I don’t fully understand why this is happening, but the results of this mentality are devastatingly clear. According to the most recent survey done by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 24% percent of eighth graders are proficient in civics, 25% are proficient in geography, and here’s the most shocking statistic of all: only 15% of eighth graders are proficient in US History. Let me write that again, only 15% of eighth graders are proficient in US History!!! Meanwhile, higher education institutions are facing a similar crisis. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, the number of history majors at higher education facilities has dropped by more than 30% since 2008. It is clear that the importance of and students’ interest in History is diminishing in this country.
All of this contributes to, or is perhaps caused by, or compounded by, the development of remarkable misconceptions about History in the general public, which has come to believe that History is just a bunch of totally unrelated facts in a vacuum. For many, historical events are like the endless terms and facts you must memorize in biology. However, these facts all come together in biology to explain how the natural processes of the world work. Many see History as something very different. They see no use in these events, believing they won’t happen again because they’ve already happened. The reality couldn’t be more different. All of these historical facts that seemingly have no relation to each other are heavily interconnected, leading to countless significant events that shaped our world, which, for better or worse, have led to the current state of civilization. By analyzing the effects of events across History, we can form parallels with what is happening today, and we can even solve some issues if we carefully connect the dots. Alarmingly, many people don’t understand this. To them, History is irrelevant, and they feel it cannot improve their lives. Yet by doing so, they fall into a terrible trap. The trap, to some extent, is people’s expectation that if we “free” ourselves from the shackles of our History, we can start fresh and not have to take responsibility for what has already been done. Through collective forgetting, the imperatives of the past, which raise a mirror to our thinking and demand a change in the paradigm, remain unfulfilled. In other words, as a famous saying goes: “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” This is the trap that we find ourselves in.
All this is so concerning because if many people lack at least a basic knowledge of our past, problems are inevitable. These problems may seem new. Yet in fact, they closely resemble what has happened but has not been reflected upon, internalized, and learned from in our past. Some of History’s most influential people also studied it thoroughly. Winston Churchill, who led the British Empire through its “darkest hour” in World War II, also wrote voluminous works about History. John F. Kennedy, who would later lead the United States through the Cuban Missile Crisis, possibly saving all of humankind from annihilation in the process, was a history major. Even today, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin calls himself a student of History. In the case of the former leaders, History was used to benefit humankind. However, it can just as easily be used by tyrants who will use and distort its power to control their people. Putin has spun a false, irredentist narrative, claiming that the Ukrainian state is a historical “mistake” that must be corrected. Unfortunately, millions of Russian citizens believe this because the narrative is repeated mercilessly by Putin’s media propaganda machine. This shows just how effectively a tyrant who knows History can command those who don’t, with lies. There can be no doubt that this can happen anywhere else. These same lies can be spun in our own country, where more and more people are coming to believe that History is just a jumble of facts having no bearing on the present, let alone the future. If we are to avoid a similar fate and not make the same mistakes, then we must save the history programs declining in schools across the country, and we must educate our youth so that they’ll stop believing various misconceptions about the subject that have gained popularity in recent years.
The power of History is its ability to solve the problems of today, and maybe even prevent them from happening again, as it is, in fact, a series of real and interrelated events that don’t occur in a vacuum. Instead, they are sewn together to create the great tapestry of human civilization. I hope that this blog will add a small thread to it.
References:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-F-Kennedy
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Winston-Churchill/As-prime-minister-again
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/02/world/putin-invasion-mistakes-hitler-blake-cec/index.html
https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/ushistory/2018/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-people-major-history-180970913/
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