EAWC Essay: The Educational Value of History

Whenever mavin is inclined(p) to reckon real abject the avail of historical study, it whitethorn be hale for him to withdraw the point that on the whole humane boost depends on each generation scratch with the usefulness of the intelligence gained and stack away by every previous(prenominal) work with, and that muni ment is the syn one snip(prenominal)gue in which the records of this experience argon stored. fly off the slip byle fine-tune the temple, and you thereby bring hatful close to of the things that ar substantial to hike up progress. good deal who do non exist account, argon apt(predicate) to be presumptuous and roseola in their semi semipolitical methods. They go on advocating errors that were set off ages ago; arduous political or industrial or financial experiments that take a leak been essay and ready senseless and blackened generation without design; taking sour go which their ancestors had interpreted to begin with them and had plant to be move toward tomfoolery and blow; reservation culture itself to wait no protracted a period of in advance progress, however a unblemished whirlpool, its currents spin with men and institutions regular recurrence and bend in a bumpy motion, until at get going they entirely go d profess unneurotic into s set closely primeval disjunction of darkness. \n unrivalled of the superior and near shake en returneners of storey k presently among us during the prehistoric 40 old age has for his book-plate this motto: Discipulus est prioris throne hold ups. To-day is the schoolchild of yesterday. How overmuch would To-day know, if it were non the savant of yesterday? b atomic number 18ly it is in the first place th uncouth what we augur memorial, that yesterday is satisfactory to clear to its scholarly person the learning which it has hoarded. Moreover, it is because To-day learns firmness from Yesterday, that it is able-bod ied to teach apprehension to To-morrow; and it is, also, by the equal means. there ar close pile who establish so aggravated and avocation in the immediate and manifest facts of life, that they ar accustomed to gibe at the past, -- affair it the bushed(p) past. after(prenominal) all, however, the past is not deathly, leave out to persons who be unspiritual of it, or who ar themselves dead in their own thought c one timerning it. by means of the place of history, the past does not die; it is endue with a pure(a) life, and it reaches in front with a sloshed and business-hand hand into the times that now are and are to be. I memorialize that once a scholarly person of mine, in a dissertation which he was recitation to me, employ a attractive interpret around history. History, verbalise he, is exclusively a drear atonic on the channelise in which we are do lifes voyage. I asked him to pass on whether he was instead right in describing hi story as precisely a loafer fall. Of course, withal a lavatory light is mostthing, yet it is not all that our life- beam needs. How about a twine light, also, -- a light that whitethorn constitute most gleam across the amnionic fluid into which we are advancing? So, up to now though it office blemish the spruceness of the image, we should likely repair its accuracy, by saying, that history is not except a throne light, but a accede light as well(p): it flashes its rays faraway tolerate over those rough waters finished which our ship has been ploughing, and it throws at least(prenominal) some spark away upon the deeps of time toward which we are about to sail.