As you may have gathered from my profile or from reading past articles, I am currently studying for a degree in History. Granted then that I clearly have an avid interest in the subject and so it may seem that what I am writing here is a little worthless. But my point here is not necessarily to 'sell' history to whoever reads this but to express my feeling that I feel: that history today in age is severely underrated.
Our personalities, families, backgrounds and life stories are shaped by our own personal histories. Often I think that the main obstacle for cynics is the nature of the word 'history' itself - it is very vague and all encompassing. One needs to realise that history is not solely the story of World War II or the Ancient Romans but every experience that every human being has gone through in his or her life that make the present a reality.
I am fascinated with history on so many different levels. I honestly believe that through studying the past one gets so much more knowledge and opinion of today's reality be it on a personal level (for example a person who finds out his family once had strong links to the trades of the sea might be able to explain his intense interest in the subject) or on a huge, global level (study the First Crusade and one suddenly becomes more at ease with the mountain of information related to tensions between Islam and Christianity).
As Universities lose funding in the not so distant future and these 'cuts' loom over education, I fear for the humanities, not least History. While it is impossible to negate the importance of subjects such as Mathematics and the Sciences for their role in modern society I think that a losing of, or a reduction in the teaching of History will have consequences which many may not initially seem to grasp.
To learn History, even at a basic leve, is to acknowledge that everything around us is not so simple as 'a' or 'b' but often the result of a complex set of actions and events that I can only describe in one word, history.
Our personalities, families, backgrounds and life stories are shaped by our own personal histories. Often I think that the main obstacle for cynics is the nature of the word 'history' itself - it is very vague and all encompassing. One needs to realise that history is not solely the story of World War II or the Ancient Romans but every experience that every human being has gone through in his or her life that make the present a reality.
I am fascinated with history on so many different levels. I honestly believe that through studying the past one gets so much more knowledge and opinion of today's reality be it on a personal level (for example a person who finds out his family once had strong links to the trades of the sea might be able to explain his intense interest in the subject) or on a huge, global level (study the First Crusade and one suddenly becomes more at ease with the mountain of information related to tensions between Islam and Christianity).
As Universities lose funding in the not so distant future and these 'cuts' loom over education, I fear for the humanities, not least History. While it is impossible to negate the importance of subjects such as Mathematics and the Sciences for their role in modern society I think that a losing of, or a reduction in the teaching of History will have consequences which many may not initially seem to grasp.
To learn History, even at a basic leve, is to acknowledge that everything around us is not so simple as 'a' or 'b' but often the result of a complex set of actions and events that I can only describe in one word, history.
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