Historians do not perform heart transplants, improve highway design, or arrest criminals. In a society that quite correctly expects education to serve useful purposes, the functions of history can seem more difficult to define than those of engineering or medicine. History is in fact very useful, actually indispensable, but the products of historical study are less tangible, sometimes less immediate, than those that stem from some other disciplines.
In Advanced World History, we learned that studying world history provides a terrain for moral contemplation. Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the past allows a student of history to test his or her own moral sense, to hone it against some of the real complexities individuals have faced in difficult settings. People who have weathered adversity not just in some work of fiction, but in real, historical circumstances does provide inspiration. “History teaching by example” is a phrase that Ms. Steele would say quite often and it describes this use of studying the past. A study not only of “heroes”, the great men and women of history who successfully worked through moral dilemmas, but also of more ordinary people who provided lessons of courage, diligence, or constructive protest. World History also provided many students a sense of identity, and this is unquestionably one of the reasons all modern nations encourage its teaching in some form. Historical data include evidence about how families, groups, institutions and whole countries were formed and about how they have evolved while retaining cohesion. For many Americans, studying the history of one's own family is the most obvious use of history, for it provides facts about genealogy and (at a slightly more complex level) a basis for understanding how the family has interacted with larger historical change. But of course there are some nations that use identity history as well and sometimes abuse it. Histories that tell the national story, emphasizing distinctive features of the national experience, are meant to drive home an understanding of national values and a commitment to national loyalty.
Studying world history allowed me to develop and refine my ability to assess evidence, and conflicting interpretations. These skills taught me how to interpret the statements of past political leaders which in turn formed my capacity to distinguish between the objective and the self-serving among statements made by present-day political leaders. Experience in examining past situations provides a constructively critical sense that can be applied to partisan claims about the glories of national or group identity. The study of world history has provided me with the opportunity to engage in debate and achieve perspective.