Back to the Past: The Significance of Studying History

Hist 109 (Introduction to the Study of History) Brief Essay

I lament for those people who say that History is boring and worthless. That is perhaps due to their encounters with a boring Araling Panlipunan teacher in their elementary days who do nothing but to make them memorize names and dates. I do not belong, however, to those kinds of students. I developed my passion in studying history when I started an obsession of collecting post cards of Filipino heroes during my 3rd grade. I can still recall my grandmother asking me what is the point of wasting my time learning about dead people. At first, I took that as an insult, but then the realization struck me that she might have a point. Why should we care about history? Why bother?

It turns out that it is a difficult question to answer. The source of these people’s dislike in History as a subject might stem on their belief that it has no practical use for an individual at all, unlike STEM and ABM courses who can generate “genuine contributions” to the society and the economy as a whole. American industrialist Henry Ford even once said that history is a “bunk” (Gilderhus 2003). Maybe they are right that studying history does not produce a great amount of income, but deeming it useless and irrelevant would be a societal suicide. A civilization that forgets about its past and heritage is tantamount to a tree that has no roots.

This brings us to the first main purpose of studying history: to apply its lessons to the present. There is an overused aphorism from Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana which says “Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it,” (Santayana 1905) which is somewhat similar to a Filipino saying “Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan ay hindi makakarating sa paroroonan.” The lessons of history can be used by us as a collective to analyze our present condition and guide our future actions. What happened before molded everything that is happening now. We learn from the mistakes of the people that came before us. That is why we say that we should never forget about the atrocities and corruption of the Marcos regime. But seeing the political climate of the Philippines, it is disappointing to say that what history teaches us is that we never learn anything from history (Hegel 1902), and part of it is because of the biggest mistake of our current history curriculum of failing to make their lessons relevant to the students.

Second point is that: history helps us to enrich our own understanding of human society and culture as a whole (McDowell 2002). The past is what already happened, and those are only preserved by human memory, but the discipline of history is a tool that we can use to organize, interpret, and analyze those memories (Jenkins 1991). It teaches us how to think critically, and to read between the lines. Remember that there is a difference between mere reading about a historical fact and actually understanding its societal implications. To illustrate, reading history is about learning that six million Jews were killed by the Nazi Germany during the Holocaust; understanding history, on the other hand, is about realizing how the Nazis made the German people believe that there is nothing morally wrong with killing people based on their ethnicity.

Learning about history surely consist of a series of injustices, atrocities, and unfortunate events that makes us angry, scared, and sad. English historian Edward Gibbon described the historical record as a series of “the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind” (Gilderhus 2003). But keep in mind that history is far more diverse than that, and can even produce inspiration and spirit of national identity to us. Which brings us to the third point: history can be an engaging and fascinating way to educate ourselves. There is nothing more exhilarating than going into a museum or a historical place, admiring not only the fact that they are old but also the fact that one is witnessing something that everyone regards as societally significant. A case in point is my unforgettable travel to Intramuros with my classmates two years ago. Entering the walled city left me mesmerized on every single Spanish-era architecture that I saw.

History may not be the favorite discipline by everyone, but surely is a vital one, especially now more than ever considering that historical distortions are rampant on the internet. Becoming ignorant of it makes us repeatedly vote for historically-proven terrible leaders. Becoming unaware of it makes us forget what we are as a nation. Becoming oblivious of it makes us think that it is alright to repeat the wrongs of the past. There is no problem, for example, about forgetting the number of people killed during Martial Law, but there will be if you do not know the very reason why they suffered such injustices.

Bibliography:

• Gilderhus, Mark T. 2003. History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction (5th Edition). New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.

• Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1902. Lectures on the Philosophy of History. London: George Bell and Sons.

• Jenkins, Keith. 1991. Rethinking History. London and New York: Routledge Classics.

• McDowell, William H. 2002. Historical Research: A Guide. London: Pearson Education Limited.

• Santayana, George. 1905. The Life of Reason Volume I: Reason in Common Sense. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Passed on November 24, 2021