• History is who we are and why we are the way we are (David McCullough) • History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again (Maya Angelou) Fall of the Berlin Wall 20. 5 Reasons to Study Old Testament History Ligonier Ministries The teaching fellowship of R.C. To Understand Today: We should study the past to understand the present. History helps us understand other cultures. In their own research, faculty in the History Department use original documents and other primary sources to question, interpret, and build arguments about the past. The lesson we should learn from this sorry history is that preemptive war is a necessity when facing a determined aggressor, and that the time and place of a potential conflict, and the capacity to wage war until its successful conclusion, must be carefully considered and prepared for when making treaty commitments and pledging the nation’s blood and treasure. As part of a continuing effort to advocate for the BA in history and highlight the value of historical thinking, the AHA invites responses to a new "Why Study History?" Imagine asking a question about the past, assembling a set of clues through documents, artifacts, or other sources, and then piecing those clues together to tell a story that answers your question and tells you something unexpected about a different time and place. Why Study Church History? To study history is to study change: historians are experts in examining and interpreting human identities and transformations of societies and civilizations over time. “There is another reason to study history: it’s fun. As such it can both make us wiser in our public choices and more richly human in our private lives. 1. As Christians we should know not only what we believe, but the true history of it. History gives us a way of looking at how other people in other days accomplished their missions. History can certainly make you more knowledgeable and interesting to talk to and can lead to all sorts of brilliant vocations, explorations, and careers – just take a look at all these former history majors, for example. That’s doing history. Exploring how humankind has changed since its hominid ancestors walked the earth is the best way to grapple with the question of what makes us special, in fact, unique, in relation to other living species. Some history—that confined to personal recollections about changes and continuities in the immediate environment—is essential to function beyond childhood. By that means, people will have access to a great human resource, compiled over many generations, which is the collective set of studies of the past, and the human story within that. They must be adept at contextualisation, analysis, problem-solving and critical thinking. Why study history? A good educational system should help people to study History more formally, more systematically, more accurately, more critically and more longitudinally. The past causes the present, and so the future. Most students who study history, select a focus, whether that be art history, ancient history, education history, military history, or based on a region, like European history. Studying history teaches discernment. Why study History? "A Career in Corporate Finance," by Clifford Manko. Eventually I realized that the best way to answer those questions was to study American history. Sproul Know the past. You … Why study history? Only by studying history can we understand how things change, what causes these changes and what features of the society persevere regardless of change. For instance, in order to understand how the United States became a country, as well as the foundations on which it was built, one must learn the history of America's founding fathers, and the world that shaped their ideas and beliefs. An Option Worth Pursuing: Teaching Opportunities for History Graduate Students in Secondary Schools, Statements, Standards, and Guidelines of the Discipline, Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct, Guidelines for Acknowledgement of Collaborators, AHA Resolution Supporting Scholars off the Higher Education Tenure Track (December 2019), Improving the Status of Non-Tenure-Track Faculty: Recommendations for History Departments, Criteria for Standards in History/Social Studies/Social Sciences, Guidelines for the Incorporation of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the Work of the History Profession, Guidelines for Historians for the Professional Evaluation of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Guidelines for the Preparation, Evaluation, and Selection of History Textbooks, Statement on Dual Enrollment/Concurrent Enrollment, Statement on Employing International Faculty, Statement Supporting Skills-Based Employment for International Students, Standards for Museum Exhibits Dealing with Historical Subjects, Statement on Diversity and Affirmative Action, Statement on Excellent Classroom Teaching of History, Statement on Right to Engage in Collective Bargaining, Tenure, Promotion, and the Publicly Engaged Academic Historian, Guidelines for the Doctoral Dissertation Process (2016), Guidelines for the Preparation of Teachers of History (2016), Best Practices for Accessible Publishing (2016), Statement of Support for Academic Freedom (2016), Guidelines on the Professional Evaluation of Digital Scholarship by Historians (2015), Statement on Graduate School Offers of Financial Support (2014), Statement on Policies Regarding the Option to Embargo Completed History PhD Dissertations, Statement on Scholarly Journal Publishing, When Academic Departments Merge: First Principles, Best Practices, Best Practices on Transparency in Placement Records, Standards for Part-Time, Adjunct and Contingent Faculty (2011), Equity for Minority Historians in the Academic History Workplace: A Guide to Best Practices, Statement on Peer Review for Historical Research, Statement on Oral History and Institutional Review Boards, University of Toronto Press Journals Booth, Don’t Panic! 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