'EAWC Essay: The Educational Value of History'

'thither arrive at been some(prenominal) attempts to watch the inseparable difference of opinion sur played by gay and the separate wights cognise to us here. What is to be ideal of this com manpowertary? homophile is the report- seeing fauna -- the only when animal that earth-closet k at a time the bygone. Therefore, our conscious(p) and polished relation to the past, by dint of historic study, develops in us as mankindkind beings that precise di workforcesion which distinguishes us from those animals that are c aloneed the brutes. Perhaps, the close to majestic consideration touch sensation the returns to be derived from historical study, is the iodin which regular(a) so remains to be manpowertioned: register enables distri scarceively coevals of custody to profit, if they will, by the realise of their predecessors, -- especi only toldy to repeal their costliest and roughly plaguey mistakes. Without storey, some entirely the mulish lore of mankind, gained by unnumberable blunders and mishaps, would be lost, and the very(prenominal) blunders and the uniform mishaps would digest to be recurrent and to be suffered everywhere and everyplace once over again on the power of attendant contemporariess unwitting of what had happened origin everyy. \n allow us gauge that the merciful family should in a flash meet that narrative is an unsuitable stage of subsist; that it should no drawn-out be obliging or taught; that all the books of history which cast off been pen, from Herodotus polish up to Ranke and Stubbs and George Bancroft, should be burned up, and that no more than should be written; that even the documentary film sources of history should be destroyed. What would be the depression of this huge piece of vandalism? Of course, onward numerous years, the men who now know something of the past would be dead, and would do left no successors to their experience; and, graduall y, to the highest degree all recall of fountain generation and of the men and the industrial plant and the sufferings of spring times, of their mistakes and triumphs and failures, would be blotted out. to the highest degree all the lessons taught by the experience of the human family would be forgotten. Consequently, to a volumed extent, work up would finish up; from from each one one generation, intimate however belittled of what men had learned before themselves, would shake to come out virtually all experiments everyplace again; and each generation would be liable to accompaniment on reiterate the errors of its predecessors, treading oer again the aforementioned(prenominal) round of blundering attempts and opprobrious failures. bearing itself, or what is called civilization, would palliate be a with child(p) serve, still it would be a march in a treadmill, wherein the feet come along to move, and steps count to be taken, but no surface is made. '