Please understand that this is a legitiment question I've been thinking about, by no means am I berating anyone who studies or likes history.
This question was on my head in elementary school and middle school, but it wasn't really something I thought to deeply about since it was a mandatory class anyway. Now that I'm in my second year of high school I am really wondering why it is important to learn history mostly since I'm a math and science guy and I feel like my history class is a waste of credits and scheduling that I could be using for a class that interests me more. My teacher might have really killed history for me since he turned the class into a politics class that is really biased to what he thinks, but I would rather take no history class even if I had the opportunity to switch.
For me, I see math and science as something I can use throughout my life as science makes me understand things in a more brighter light and math is my tool to do so. Next, English is just a class as I need to use English throughout my life and to make essays, letters, and decently worded questions. Lastly, Spanish is just really an advantage for me since it is the 2nd most diverse language in the world.
So, I don't really see a point in history class. Please don't give me a response I get a lot of my history teachers tell me like "history will repeat itself otherwise" or something like that since I'm not saying just destroy history class in general. I can see how politics is important since I need to make decisions as they will come back to bite me if I make it wrong there but I watch the news regularly and have my own opinion on that. What is the point of learning history other than being a historian or to teach academia? Thanks ahead of time.
hiya, this question has been asked here a few times. I've picked out some with longer answers; check them out
/u/Polybius in https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3u2jwz/why_is_learning_history_important/
/u/Borimi and others in https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/odq0o/why_is_it_important_to_study_history/
/u/bitparity and /u/TheGreenReaper7 in https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2dxu8l/what_is_the_value_of_learning_from_history_and/
various users in https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/27jkd3/why_is_knowing_history_important/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15pkyp/why_study_history/
I won't answer your question as I'll leave it up to someone that can word it vastly better than I, but I will admit that I didn't enjoy history until after I graduated high school. It was then that I realized that understanding history helps you understand who you are. We spend so much time thinking about now, or the future, but without understanding where you came from it's difficult to know where you're going.
For example, let's say you're going on a ski trip. Wonderful. But why? If you don't care about history then you don't care about why you're going on the ski trip. Otherwise, you'd ask yourself why you're going in the first place. Was it something someone said? Is it something you saw?
That's how I got into history (not skiing). I hate English. I really do. I wanted to understand why words have similar spellings but have different meanings and pronunciations. To understand that, I had to understand where it came from. The more I studied back, the more I learned about how it formed, from where, and why. I also learned about the cultures. Eventually, I found myself interested in history back to earliest languages. This also led me to learn about trade, because languages got some help evolving from traders. How did they communicate? How did they trade? What were they trading? Questions like these just kept me digging more and more.
You mentioned math, but did you ever wonder when it started? Who the hell came up with math and why? What did they need for it? Then you start to find the introduction of mathematics to solve problems. Understanding the history of math, when algebra started, etc. also helps you understand the mathematics you use today. I hated geometry until I understood the history of it.
Unlike many here, I'm no professional. Certain questions that pertain to my interests keep me interested and always inquiring.
Hi f1ftyguns, I understand your point of view. But first, I have to ask you a question. Are you Asian? Because that might cause you to dislike or be bored during white history. Not trying to be racist or anything but people tend to get bored when they are not interested. I will just assume that you are. Now if you were learning about Asian history do you think that will change your views? Because I think that it would. Studies done by America's renown AP Huggers, under the pen name sdong, showed that people tend to enjoy history classes more if it is about their own nationality, ethnicity, or race. So in conclusion, I am just saying that if you thought of yourself as an Asian American (I am also assuming that you live in the U.S.) not just an Asian, you might find your history classes more relatable and even fun. And if you look for a use for history you will be able to find it.
Best wishes, yomada