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Is history really our teacher?
Results so far:
| Yes | 79% | 584 votes | Total: 741 votes | |
| No | 21% | 157 votes |
Yes
by Sandra Piddock
Created on: February 08, 2008
If history isn't our teacher, it's not history's fault. How often have you vowed you'd have done something different with the benefit of hindsight? What is history if it isn't recorded hindsight? And it's a very old but very true adage that history has a habit of repeating itself.
Anyone who never made a mistake never made anything, and our forebears made mistakes aplenty. Even the greatest figures in our past made the odd boo-boo. Take Churchill, for instance; he led the Allies to victory in World War II, but he got it wrong at Gallipoli in the Great War. More recently, Margaret Thatcher fronte the Falklands Campaign to great acclaim; it guaranteed victory for the Conservatives in the following General election. But I bet she regrets listening to the ministers who told her it would be a good idea to replace the Domestic Rating System with the Poll Tax.
History provides us with a record of what has passed, from which we can learn and, hopefully, avoid the pitfalls of previous generations. Times change but people don't, and this is a good maxim to hold onto if you really want to learn from history. There will always be evil people, such as those responsible for the Holocaust. But they were only able to carry out their wicked agenda because at first people didn't know what was going on, and, when they did, they couldn't believe that such things could happen. While similar things still happen, there will never be carnage on such a scale because, thanks to the power and ubuquity of the modern media, such infamy is soon discovered and stopped in its tracks.
History has also taught us that democracy is the best policy. We have seen what dictatorships and absolute monarchies have done to the countries of the world and its peoples and democracy is now the norm rather than a novelty. Of course, we have to remember that history is written by the winners, and it is only in the last century or so that we have had access to the historic voices of ordinary men and women. Even so, there is a clear lesson that the tyrants and incompetents almost always fail to prosper. Think of Charles I of England and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
History should be like a third parent; if you will allow it to, it can be your teacher, mentor, comforter and friend. These days, people are very fond of saying that history should remain where it belongs - in the past. I believe that we can only look forward to a good future - individually, nationally and globally - if we have the courage and wisdom to look back and learn from our history. The past is not another country, it is our heritage, and we owe it to our children and grandchildren to see that our heritage does not become buried treasure.
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No
by Elaine Sihera
Created on: June 13, 2007
There is a little saying, "Until lions have their own historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter." And that is the basic nature of history: it is subject to individual interpretation, manipulation and wishful thinking, especially in the past where the evidence was not as carefully preserved, well documented and accessible as it is now. So history is obviously a poor teacher, otherwise it would be more representative of our humanity, not just those with the power, and we would have learnt much more from it.
History cannot be our teacher because we would not be repeating the errors of yesterday, repeating almost the same results without learning any new lessons. Iraq and Vietnam are a case in point. Despite the awful loss of life in Vietnam, the frustration with winning that war and it's sheer viciousness, the capitulation at the end and the general dissatisfaction about US involvement, President Bush is happily revisiting the sins of his father to do even worse in Iraq. Throwing caution to the wind, he has squandered American reputation and billions on something he could never hope to win, proving beyond doubt that history had nothing to teach him.
History is also dominated by particular slants, pervasive manipulation as excuse for bad memory and it mainly favours those who can give a good narrative and those well known, not the unsung and silent heroes who actually helped to make the substance of that history. We only hear of the great works of great people while every brutal act is downplayed and desensitised to favour the victor, like the British Empire, an oppressive, racist, colonial regime which forced British customs, administration and language on many races across the world under the guise of 'discovering' new lands and peoples and 'civilising' them, while robbing them of their resources and extending British power. Yet that has been reported in history as something glorious, a time which put the 'Great' in Britain without acknowledging, until recently, the insensitivity, sheer brutality and racist nature of some its administrations, not to mention the legacy of displacement and loss o local pride that was left.
History could teach us a lot, but it is not the nature of man to learn, otherwise it would curb our innovative spirit through fear of repeating the consequences shown in history. Our nature is to keep creating new history with the hope of changing what has already happened, and definitely bettering it. Not to really learn from it. Hence President Bush's rash actions. So we are the teachers of history through the mark and legacy we strive to leave behind us, while history leaves a never ending trail of people who failed to learn from its recurring and ever potent lessons.
Learn more about this author, Elaine Sihera.
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