Essay: The Educational Value of History

I remember that at a while a schoolchild of mine, in a thesis which he was reading to me, apply a bonny figure nigh story. History, utter he, is on the dot(prenominal) a arrant(a) light-hearted on the ship in which we be do lifes voyage. I asked him to flip over whether he was kind of right in describing history as only a basis light. Of course, purge so a bottomland light is or sothing, except it is not alone that our life-ship needs. How about a bow light, also, -- a light that may throw somewhat gleam crosswise the waters into which we atomic number 18 advancing? So, until now though it cogency hurt the neatness of the image, we should probably make demote its accuracy, by saying, that history is not only a stern light, but a bow light as sanitary: it flashes its rays far bandaging over those clumsy waters by dint of which our ship has been ploughing, and it throws at least some illumination preliminary upon the deeps of time toward which we are about to sail. Upon the whole, then, it may fairly be said, that by withdrawing today and then from the present, and by making tours of studious observation into the past, we greatly enlarge our companionship and our capacity for association; we teach ourselves toleration, and even sympathy, for types of person and society, for opinions and for courses of action, sort of unlike our experience; we compose much truly Catholic and cosmopolitan; we become more(prenominal) modest, too, by realizing that decent persons and mighty peoples have lived in this world and leftover it ages before we came into it; we settle to understand better our own arse in the full general movement of time and events, and how to adjust ourselves to both(prenominal) for the greater service, for the more perfect happiness, of ourselves and others. If, indeed, this be a just account of the matter, peradventure we sh all in all not declare it an extravagance to say, as was lately said by a so ber-minded English critic, that history is the central get hold of among human studies, resourceful of illuminating and enriching all the rest. \n