Why Are So Many Americans Not Interested in History? (WW2, Egyptians, Hitler)

[Matt Marcinkiewicz]

Originally Posted by plmokn

Most Americans have no control over what happens in Syria, so we don't care. We don't care, we don't vote for the same reason. It's pretty much a waste of time. At least TV provides entertainment and in some cases education.

For example instead of researching the canned and prepackaged election "issues", I'd rather go roller blading at the beach. I research to the extent that I am prepare for the outcomes of elections (how it might affect my investments for example). My one vote won't make much difference. You can have my vote. I don't care.

Are you former City-Data user "Charles" operating under a new alias? Don't accuse me of not knowing my CD history (if my guess is correct, anyway).

[Matt Marcinkiewicz]

Originally Posted by Ohio Hello

In my personal experience, I hated history/civics in middle and high school. I always did well, but math and science were more interesting.

Then I had some great history professors in college who were passionate about sharing how the past has shaped the world as we know it today. It also helped that our study materials and class discussions weren't sanitized or restricted. Sex, drugs, dirty deals, murder, religious debates, torture, rape, espionage, oppression of minorities and women....nothing was off topic or irrelevant. College kids are old enough to see how that all plays into societal norms and actions of the past. It was also the first time that I realized that historians don't have all the answers, and that what we know is always changing. That's exciting to me, and I still do enjoy reading history books and watching documentaries.

My first history prof told us all to read Lies My Teacher Told Me if we liked what we were learning in class. That book got me hooked, and I can't stop reading one thing or another about it . Then again, I don't have cable and I rarely watch TV.

So maybe some people who would otherwise be interested in history never had a teacher in high school that fostered a love for our past, or perhaps they didn't have the opportunity to go to college and discover that it's not all boring memorization.

Side note, if you're into podcasts: Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. I wish he would turn this into a weekly thing, it's really very entertaining.

Nice post. I can relate to the first two paragraphs, except that in my case I'd replace the college experience with books/documentaries that I've encountered independently/via the Internet/from intellectually inclined friends (the only history class I took in college was a large, 200+ student lecture that coincided with the height of my sports betting addiction, and I just so happened to take the class with my good friend (at the time) and lender/betting facilitator, so I spent 90% of the class in the very last row studying USA Today's daily list of point spreads/over-unders and passing notes back and forth about what bets we'd make after class concluded. It also didn't help that the course itself, "Ancient Myths And World Religions", was, in my estimation, taught in a similarly uninspiring fashion to the K-12 history/social studies education I'd received, where the curriculum revolved around rote memorization of dates, facts (sometimes dubious though those "facts" may be or may have been, especially if we're talking about the "why" "facts" rather than the "what" or "who" or even "how" facts), and generalizations. I think I managed a rather thoughtless C in the course while simultaneously managing to accumulate ~4k in gambling debts from the bets that would be made from the campus library immediately after class...good times in the history of the life of Matt Marcinkiewicz)

In the meantime, though, I've discovered that a greater interest in history develops naturally from pre-existing interests in philosophy and science. As a staunch materialist (philosophical materialist)/determinist, I read history from the perspective of discovering some tiny fraction of the symptoms of the overall disease (the physical laws of the universe).

Truly intelligent people, which America seems to lack at all levels of society, are capable of integrating knowledge from artificially isolated disciplines (isolated in academia anyway) and shaping a rich and comprehensive worldview from such a project. And it's not a pretty picture which emerges, obviously. But I didn't need to read history to develop a fatalistic worldview...combined with life experience, just a little exposure to Schopenhauer and Hobbes were needed via philosophy 101, and then the psychological floodgates opened. Narrowly focused historical accounts can provide satisfying (if anecdotal) reinforcement of broad philosophical frameworks, though, and ideally once you start thinking about a given event or trend or innovation or what have you, then you start thinking about related events/trends/innovations, and so on and so forth. Thus you think more analytically about everything, which isn't necessarily recommended for mental health, but it is key if one wishes to make any effort to approach a state that could plausibly be described as "wise" (which is hardly a prized objective in American culture).

Of course, one can also spend a lifetime in the blissful relative ignorance (broadly speaking) of the "historical specialist" (think of the guys you might see on an H2 conspiracy theory show, the oft-intelligent people who nevertheless demonstrate an irrational fixation with certain minutiae at the expense of everything else, including "deeper" thought), to use a term I just encountered in Niall Ferguson's "The Great Degeneration", wherein one focuses obsessively on researching some narrow topic like the Civil War or Washington's presidency or the Norman conquest of England or whatever other of the effectively infinite topics an historian could choose to focus his research efforts on. The findings of such people are needed for the benefit of the more holistically/philosophically minded, but those specialists themselves are likely to be drowning in the trivialities of that which just so happened to occur.

Given the argument I made in the preceding sentence, I much prefer to Santayana's too-often-cited quote the following: "If history teaches any lesson at all, it is that there are no historical lessons." French historian Lucien Febvre is/was responsible for that one, and it must be said that I concur with such a conclusion at the deepest level. Rough guide, sure, but source of lessons? Not according to my black-and-white conception of the term "lessons" (eg, do X to avoid Y, don't do P to accomplish Q). His quote is a nod to unintended consequence, which tends to be drastically de-emphasized in the typical historical account (or anytime, really). Which is why the speculations advanced in counterfactual history can be pretty interesting, if ultimately futile because the number of variables involved in history is just...overwhelming, and therefore any projection (eg "What would've happened if the Confederacy won the Civil War?") is futile...but still stimulating to ponder.

This post is a little stream-of-consciousness-ish, so I apologize for the long-winded parenthetical digressions and whatnot, but this is sometimes what results when I drink coffee rather than beer.

[Old Gringo]

Originally Posted by VGravitas

I think that history is absolutely fascinating. It helps us understand the present, appreciate the progress we've made, and better understand human nature. It also helps us avoid repeating certain mistakes.

Yet, so many people are not into history at all.


Why do you suppose that's so?

This gives some perspective:

"If I were to speechify to a conclave of Tea Partyers, “America is the free-est...the most democratic...the best educated and most dynamic country the world has ever known, an example to all mankind,” the assembled would hoot and hooroar and applaud in dizzy exaltation. Here is the soul of the American approach to existence, bottomless self-admiration devoid of knowledge or curiosity, wrapped like a psychic burrito in the patriotism of overwrought middle-schoolers. And there are many, many of them."


Fred On Everything

[mwruckman]

Originally Posted by red4ce

I love history, mainly because of the excellent programming the history channel USED to have. Now it's all a bunch of 'reality' show drivel.

If it isn't Reality shows like the Pawn Brokers or Ice Road Truckers it is psuedo science and pseudo history like programs sellin Ancient Aliens or that the Nazis built a bell shaped Time machine to make an escape into the future. They even roll out an old charlitan from the 1960s like Erich von Daniken

[goldengrain]

An interest in something often occurs when it builds upon what you already know.
I know people who used to read historical novels and built an interest from them.
I don't know how true this is, but many people who enjoy history are those who have had actual History courses in high school and many who no longer pursue the subject had Social Studies courses.

I have just ordered a book (Darkness at Dawn, the rise of Russia's Criminal State) which could open the door to Russian history or to a biography of Putin.

You cannot teach history in a vacuum. People have to be able to relate it to something they have been exposed to in the past.

[kovert]

I bet when it comes to sport and pop culture history, Americans got most of the world beat.

[Chango]

Originally Posted by kovert

I bet when it comes to sport and pop culture history, Americans got most of the world beat.

Naw... the rest of the world plays soccer. Que pena, che!

[Dayton Sux]

I think Americans actually ARE interesed in history, which is why you see this Civil War re-enactor subculture (which has branched out to other wars and time periods), and the interest in old historic house restorations, battleflelds, etc... Just not that interested in World History.

(unless we intersect with it at certain points, as when we are at war someplace).

Personally I love history, read history just for fun. But I've had very few formal history classes while in high school or college (US history in high school and elective in the history of the post civil war South in college), plus a general survey of world history back in elementary school. Thats it. The limits of my formal education in history.

Most of what I know is self-taught, in fact I was self taught enough to bypass general-studies world history in college (my college had a general studies core curricculum but you could test out of parts of it).

I do agree that it is useless knowlege for the average person, or even the not-so-average person vs knowing math/science/statistics and having a good command of the language. History is actually more like Trivial Pursuit vs, say, doing mathematical modelling and such....

But as a hobby and entertainment history is OK. Ok for that.

[j_k_k]

Even a lot of those interested in history today are purely agenda-driven, in that they seek only information that will support their particular world views.

A pure study of history has no agenda except for the revelation of as much truth (or, in its absence, educated supposition) as can be unearthed. Take the eternal argument about the racial origin of the ancient Egyptians, for example. Too much of it is agenda-driven, based upon a desire for a certain outcome. This poisons everything. An honest study would seek out and evaluate all the evidence, then formulate an intelligent conclusion based upon sensible historigraphy. As such, the study of history is inexhaustibly fascinating.

One good example was a book I read that argued that the real Rudolf Hess died in a flying boat crash in Scotland during his British captivity, and that the Hess tried, convicted and sentenced at Nuremberg was a double. There are a lot of problems with that theory, chiefest of which is that when Hess finally accepted visits from his wife and son, they outwardly believed him genuine (as evidenced by their strong wishes for clemency for him); a double could not credibly have had the shared memories. But even so, when I got to looking into the authors, I learned that all they do is write conspiracy books. In short, there is evidence that they don't ever debunk any conspiracy and then write about that. Without a conspiracy, they don't have a book; thus, there will be a conspiracy or it's not worth their time. This is an agenda-driven approach, though not necessarily a political one. There is no reason to think they'd have written yet another reasonably accurate biography of Hess, had they determined that there weren't really any noteworthy conspiracies. And yet the thoughtful historian cannot wholly dismiss them, any more than we dismiss Suetonius simply because he's kind of the ancient equivalent of People magazine. Just because their conclusion looks all wet doesn't mean that they didn't discover anything of value.

I think history can be self-taught, but academic history study is helpful for the critical thinking it inculcates. Anyone who embraces that, especially with no agenda but the most reliable version of accounts available, should be able to form his or own credible account and interpretation of events.

[skoro]

I think it could be generalized far beyond America. Lots of people muddle through life with little awareness of anything outside their immediate situation, and often little grasp of even that.

Curiosity is not a universal human trait.