At least past 100 years or older.

Quit waisting time,energy and money , life is too short.

We have MORE than proven that all kinds of people can learn almost every thing .

Face the facts, everything we need to know going forward in the future we can use from the last hundred years.

The time prior to the current century is irrelevant.

Learning is not the problem,
Decision makeing,
There is the problem.


Every decision that needs to be made for the next 20 years can be made from all the last 99 years information.

So quit it , just stop teaching ancient history.

I understand that you're being sarcastic. But still, those who don't know history, or don't learn from it, are doomed to repeat it.

I don't think you're joking here...

First, ancient history and history from before the 20th century are not one in the same.

I'd say you're very wrong. Democracy's creation, failed attempts at it, Rome's chasm between the rich and poor, technological advances spurring civilization's advancement.

Let's not even get into scientific discoveries, throw out all mathematical rules developed more than 100 years ago. Hell, let's get rid of gravity and Newton while we are at it.

Maybe I missed the sarcasm emoji.

ETA: Okay, I'll admit, I assumed sarcasm but it sounded too good, and there weren't any GD emojis.

I can see how someone could feel that way. However, what if a hundred years ago, people thought thusly? Where would we be today? Not conversing on the interweb in the comfort of our own homes.

Someone did in fact engage a similar line of reasoning over a hundred years ago. In 1889, Charles H. Duell, the Commissioner of the US patent office, stated that the patent office would soon downsize and be reduced to archival purposes only because, as he put it, "Everything that can be invented has been invented."

I don't think they're teaching any history.

We are making the same bad decisions that previous societys made 160, 260 and 400 years ago.

Over and over and over again ,
Sure ,sure somebody figured something out,


Take the weaving loom for example

We could still use take advantage of that contraption for long after,
The 200 year mark and eventually we would still invent computers because of it,

But the damage done to many many aspects of society through the bad decision making within the 100 year time span keeps progress to mankind at half the speed of say continental drift .


So the world is much rounder than it is flat, how many conflicts has that stopped?

So we figured out planet movement and some of them have moons .

200 years after those dramatic revelations ,
Are people more tolerant of each other ?
Yes the living conditions and quality of life has made huge progress.


How does one go about connecting all this?

You may have a point. Judging from all the cases where it is repeating itself, even with the internet and all the accumulated knowledge of the world ever at one's fingertips, nobody ever seems to learn from history anyway.

To the current “Gen Z” folks, anything that happened before the date of their birth is Ancient History, and therefore irrelevant. They “live” in the here-and-now in their self-absorbed narcissistic life.

“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.” ― George Orwell, 1984

This message has been edited. Last edited by: 2BobTanner,

In school back in the olden-days when I was a kid, seems all they taught was remembering dates and events. or that is how I remember it.

Today, I view history as much more important ~ mostly to understand on how people thought back then and not so much on what they did or when it was.

I apply it to many areas today in life, being in the technology business I have seen history rapidly change before my eyes and it gives me appreciation of what we have accomplished today.

History is so valuable today and so many are missing it, ever watch those man-on-the-streets interview when kid after kid couldn't even tell you who the current VP is (just picked that stat at random).

So ask them anything about the past they are clueless just as they will be in life.

But how much history is question /concern

Schools stopped teaching real history at least 30 years ago. Now it is nothing more than spin, agenda and a one-sided view of world events where we are always wrong.

In the not too distant future schools will be teaching that Pearl Harbor was our fault and that 9-11 was blown out of proportion and was just a small group of misunderstood freedom fighters.

Like they say, studying history doesn't just tell you what happened in the past. It tells you what's happening now.

quote:

Originally posted by cas:
I don't think they're teaching any history.

This. You got your wish.

"There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know."

- Harry S Truman

History is what happened, not what people think should have happened or wish had happened. It seems that more of the latter is being taught.

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:
History is what happened, not what people think should have happened or wish had happened. It seems that more of the latter is being taught.

Not just the "what" which is interesting but more interesting is the "why"? And that is the big lesson in history and the point of contention for conflicting view points.

I think you're being too generous saying a hundred years.
Most don't seem to know anything they can't look up on the internet so that's become the standard, if there is one, and even that is only for ones that would even bother.
Just watch some of those "man on the street" interviews to see how uninformed most people are.
Almost anything that most of us learned in our basic schooling, history, math, geography or science, isn't part of the vocabulary anymore.

If kids want to know how or why or who they can look it up on google.


But how often are they needing to know Plato's uncle or Geo. washingtons nephew ?

Well the problem with the net is that while you can rapidly find information on just about anything you have zero chance of ever knowing if it hadn’t been adulterated by someone - like Wikipedia. It isn’t a reference or a resource.

The best thing you can do is find an old history book and read it - one that hasn’t been rewritten

The problem I see is that circumstances rarely, if ever, present a definitive answer no matter how much computational power you have at your disposal. You must collect as much data as you can, meaning past history, then make your best statistically sound guess.

"This is what we did in the past, these are the results that were generated, so here's what is to best probability what we should do now."