We Never Learn

We speak of bettering the world.

We speak of learning from our mistakes, learning from history, learning from the infinite errors, from the petty to the gargantuan, from the careless to the fatal, from the lucky to the tragic.

On the positive side, at least we are improving our persuasive skills: second by second our long harangues about how ready we are for the future grows indefinitely in influence. These flamboyant speeches spread the seeds of hope under the shields of blissful ignorance, they act as our protectors, convincing us always that we are ready .

What are we ready for? More genocides? More destruction?

The notes which my friend’s little brother, a very intelligent student in the IB program, carries home from his European History class is jammed full of dates. Other than dates, there are names. Just dates, names, and events. “Hitler organized a Putsch. The Bavarian government betrayed him afterwards”, his notes say.

After ending every war we claimed that we have learned from it. But I ask you, what have we learned?

So far, I gather that we have learned a handful of dates and another handful of names. Jumble those up together and we have “learnt from history”.

To be frank I don’t see any use in knowledge like this. I don’t understand how knowing the exact day that the Reichstag was burnt down has anything to do with preventing another World War. I don’t see how memorizing the number of casualties in the Rape of NanJing could change our future for the better. Our generation came out from one of the most devastating and progressive centuries, and it seems as if the typical intelligent high school student knows nothing more than what happened when and where. Maybe they know why, but their reasons for why are always linked to another what happened when and where with whom.

History is the art of reflection. It’s an art of self-criticism on a grander scale.

But what is happening to it? Has it been dissolved into mindless historiographies, debating over the semantics of which country caused the First World War? Nowadays we are studying mindless dates, names on paper, events which hold no more significance than what we had for dinner yesterday... We have forgotten the essence of history. We have forgotten the importance of self-criticism in order to avoid future mistakes, in a fight to earn higher marks in school, more reputation in the world.

We study how an event is caused, I agree. We also study who caused the event, and what environment caused the event, and I applaud that as well. We study the time frame of the event, compare it to other events of the same time, attempt to find relationships... There is nothing wrong with that.

However, what is inherently wrong is that we are only looking at what caused the events. Take a common test question, “What caused World War One?” A popular answer is that Austria wanted a war, and Germany was leveraging itself against Austria’s wants in a desperate attempt to better its failing economical and political state (Fromkin). This answer focuses on the immediate causes of the war, nothing else. Look at some other popular interpretations - all center no farther than a possible ten-year time frame from the event.

If we were to learn from our mistakes that way, we would be cutting only the leaves of the weed, not its roots. We learn about the trigger of the event, not what caused the trigger. We cannot do without either, but so far we are pretending to make do with only the former.

If a person trips over a stone once and starts paying attention to the road, the person is intelligent. If the person has to trip twice to notice, then the person needs to pay more attention. But if the person keeps repeating the same mistakes because he never reflects on his errors, he mars the definition of insanity.

Some say that the history children learn in school is only the very tip of the iceberg of history as a subject, that those histories are the building bricks of what is to come, if they choose to be history majors.

Then let me ask you something. The Western world has been spreading the concept of democracy for over a century now. Free representation, liberation, universal suffrage - but what is the use of democracy if only such a small sector, the small section that grows up to be “history majors”, knows what they are doing? What if the “history majors” argue something correctly, but since they are so small the world ignores them? Is this not the horror of democracy? That in the tidal waves of public opinion, the minority is wiped out of the picture - regardless of whether or not they are right or wrong - in the argument that the winners are always right - is this not the nightmare of the government we so adore?

In our schools today, we learn semantics. We drive down to the details and forget the big picture. We are so obsessed with progress that we forget to study the past. Ask any kid if they know anything about Stalin, if they know anything about Castro, about Mao - they shrug, “Isn’t history about events?”

We have been running so hurriedly for the future that we haven’t been paying much attention to this pebble that keeps reappearing under our feet that we keep tripping over time and time again... But what will happen the next time we trip? Will there be a future to which to run?