History is the discipline concerned with the study of past events. It involves the discovery, collection, organization, presentation and interpretation of the traces left behind by those events, including written documents, oral histories or traditional oral accounts, art and material artifacts. These, along with archaeological and ecological markers, provide the raw material that historians use to make sense of human pasts.
For many people, the idea of learning about history evokes images from high school classes full of memorization of names, dates and places. However, this type of rote memorization is less important now that the Internet has allowed us to access facts in a matter of seconds. Today, the study of history is about connecting the dots between the past and the present. It is about understanding why certain things happened and what lessons can be learned from those events. It is about exploring times of suffering and times of joy, and about understanding what it means to be a citizen of the world.
The study of history is also an exercise in empathy. Historians must examine a variety of sources and try to understand the motivations of people at different times, and how they viewed their place in the world. This is often a difficult task, since human motivations are messy and complicated and are susceptible to a wide range of biases. This is especially true when attempting to read and interpret the words of other humans from the past.
It is not unusual for scholars to find that they disagree about the significance of individual events, ideas or persons. This is a natural consequence of the fact that historians come from different places and have different interests. Historians who are interested in politics, for example, may find that a particular person or event is significant, but those who are more interested in culture will probably find the same person or event to be unimportant.
As a result, historians must constantly work to keep their eyes open for bias and illogical reasoning. The study of history is a messy business, and it is not immune to the influences of pride, vanity and self-righteousness. It is also a subject that can be easily misused and abused. If used to legitimise the actions of some groups of citizens against others, then it becomes a weapon in the culture wars, and that diminishes its usefulness.
For these reasons, it is essential that we learn to value the study of history. If we are to make good decisions about the future, then we must be able to understand what has gone before. The study of history is a critical part of that process, and it is a subject that should be taught well, not merely as a vehicle for the promotion of any particular ideology. It is also a subject that should be studied alongside other social sciences, such as science and math. Without the context of other disciplines, it is easy for history to become an empty verbalism.