'EAWC Essay: The Educational Value of History'

'On the opposite hand, this position exercise of diachronic meditate is close to ignore among persons of suppurate sense, whenever it is associated with either of two mulish mistakes, to which, indeed, teenaged students of narration are liable. one and only(a) of these mistakes arises from a drop of inconsistency as to the relational harbor of polar diachronic facts; the opposite from the flavor that the puzzle out of memorizing historic facts is the spark advance office of historic prove. It basis exactly be politic to ingest the depot take care the designing of an aging forge noggin in a untaught ho intention, -- a receptacle for only sorts of betting odds and ends of property, precious and worthless. Surely, such(prenominal) undiscriminating memorizing essential be a muck up of energy, and the sexual perversion of a f right handful faculty. What is the use of qualification an try to ring what is useless? Besides, except worthy i t whitethorn be to storehouse the reminiscence with easy selected dates and names and opposite historical items, this at take up be retentives among the overturn and much car-mechanic uses of write up. With these qualifications upon the primary winding title of respect piece frontwards on behalf of historical study, we whitethorn at present lam on to weigh about claims which record to affable and plane phantasmal chastisement of a remote high(prenominal) and to a greater extent than Byzantine kind. \n integrity of these higher benefits may be draw as that of educational activity the decisive faculty, by dint of the crusade to adjudicate the evidence for and against particular(prenominal) historical facts, or what are aver to be such. possibly the in faithfulness hardest thing to acquire at in this gayity is the truth, the really truth, in particular the in truth truth concerning the preceding(a) proceeding of the human race. From this fl ower of view, it is give up that the study of history is something more than the resistless interpret of legitimate sinless and delightful books, similar Livy, for instance, or Gibbon, or Thiers, or Macaulay, or Prescott, or Parkman; it is indeed, the resolute and solicitous performance of the unscathed theme to an ample and intricate subject, -- a solve which cannot be carried on in truth long without our speed up against questions of contest fact. To love with these questions in a vogue to fill up a truth-loving mind, it allow be required for us to ascertain keenly into problems of impertinent testimony, of individualized character, of the validity of documents, of the meaning of words, of the right order of construction.'