Dan Snow's History Hit - Why Study History?

Episode Date: June 10, 2020

My guests this week were Marcus Collins and Peter Stearns. They've just released a wonderful new book, 'Why Study History?' - a guide for prospective students and parents to enthuse the reader and answer the crucial questions that a college prospectus might conveniently miss out. They joined me on the pod to examine the intellectual, economic and societal benefits of studying history. We discussed the humanities in relation to STEM subjects, the typical career trajectory of a history graduate and examined history's crucial role in civic studies. Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We're asking the biggest question of all today. We're asking the question that nags at all of us who love history. When we see these wonderful doctors and scientists fighting Covid. When we see these engineers inventing ever better solar panels that can hopefully save us from a climate emergency by turning the sun's rays into energy. When we hear about people improving the efficiency of batteries or developing new cancer treatment, we think to ourselves, is history up there alongside those careers, those vocations? Is it as important? Why study history? Well, that's a big question that my two guests on this podcast have sought to answer.

We've got Marcus Collins. He's a senior lecturer in history at Loughborough University in the UK. And we've got Peter Stearns, who's a professor of history at George Mason University in the US. And they teamed up to write a book called Why Study History? And what I like about it, as you'll hear from the podcast, there's two kind of silos. There's one which is very pragmatic telling young people and parents perhaps why study history is it going to get your job are you going to be able to live eat put a roof over your head have a little spending money if you study history is it a good subject to study in those terms and then of course there are other reasons study history obviously which we come to as well and i think this is a really important

question at an absolutely fundamental well actually i I about to say it's an important time, but it's always an important time to study history. So enjoy this podcast, enjoy the discussion with these two heroes on different sides of the Atlantic. If you wish to study history a lot more, my goodness, I've got the place for you. History Hit TV. It's the world's best history channel. You go on there, you watch hundreds of documentaries. We've got documentaries from all over the world on history. We've got hundreds of podcasts that are exclusively available on History Hit TV. And the best thing is, if you use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, only available to podcast listeners. Those other people don't get all this. So this one's just for you guys it's pod one gets you 30 days for free and then the first month just one pound euro or dollar so you can check it out

you can bathe in that history for just really a pound or a dollar or a euro pretty cheap in fact it's pretty difficult to make it cheaper than that so please check out that i hope you enjoyed the how and why history we've launched a new podcast called How and Why History. Just a comprehensive look at a big, chunky historical topic with an academic history team are producing that. The first one was on Attila the Hun. We've got Pearl Harbour coming up. We've got lots more in the locker. So go and check out How and Why History from History Hit. In the meantime, though, enjoy this podcast, Why Study History. In the meantime though, enjoy this podcast, Why Study History.

Guys, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We always say it's an important time to study history, but does this feel more important than normal? Is that why you wrote this book? Was it planned for a while or was this a product, a response to the contemporary world? Well, it's not a response to the current crises. We started it long before that. The crises make the use of history more obvious, but obviously we are concerned with the human condition in contemporary society and we think that history has a lot to say about that. So in that sense, we do view the book as a product of the times.

about that. So in that sense, we do view the book as a product of the times. I also would add to that that I think that the particular COVID crisis is leading to an economic crisis, which will lead to the possibility of a crisis in education. And so although we started this book before Covid, we finished it during the lockdown and we're very aware that previous economic depressions have really made people question about whether history is just a luxury they can't afford to study in a time when STEM subjects seem like a much more financially viable way to survive during difficult times okay well this is it guys this is the question because my daughter is you know beginning her formal education she just gets battered every day around the head and neck by mathematics and stem subjects this is the call to arms let's start with you p. Why should young people see history as worthy of study, both intellectually, but also that will bring them actual real world benefits, perhaps in the economy that they're going to go into? OK, well, the answer is twofold.

First of all, you study history because it does tell you how society functions. It gives you experience in dealing with social change, with social conditions, and it helps you understand what's going on around you in ways that will make your own life more meaningful, make your activities as a citizen more productive, and simply inform. So that's point one. Point two is, partly because of this, history actually leads to a variety of jobs, a few of them directly in history, as with teaching, but more of them in other fields. So one of the things we obviously work on hard in the book is that history has very practical and constructive results for the individual. So it's the combination,

social understanding, and direct contribution to a variety of good jobs, good opportunities. I'd like to break those down in a second. But Marcus, let's hear your top line. What do you say to those students who are arming and aring about it, or particularly maybe those parents who are just thinking, I think I want my little one to go and become a dentist. who are just thinking, I think I want my little one to go and become a dentist. You're absolutely right that history has an image problem. And this problem is about, first of all, that people think that it's about the past. What use is that to the present? And secondly, that because of that, it is not going to earn you big bucks or get you jobs other than to be a history teacher.

Neither of those things is true. They are based on myths. So I think now, particularly right now, we're seeing the relevance of history. We're talking at a time when there are demonstrations about George Floyd but it's not just about George Floyd right it's about him as one in a line of black people who has been subject to extrajudicial killing and that this is a historical pattern that people see and want to respond to. We're also talking at a time when we're coming up to Brexit and the idea of Brexit to take back control was premised on the notion that there was this period of time at which we had control. Much like when Donald Trump talks about making America great again, he's imagining this golden age of America the great. So these are historical models which feed into contemporary debates and really shape our responses to contemporary problems now. The other thing, does it get you a decent job? Well, we went to some

lengths to look at the numbers of this. So we looked at information from UK tax agencies, from the American Census Bureau. And the bottom line of this is that history will get you basically, on average, a plum typical salary over the long term. That doesn't mean that you will become a master of the universe, necessarily. It does mean that you will out-earn everybody else who studies the humanities. Again, this is your average history graduate as opposed to your average humanities graduate. You'll out-earn nearly everybody who studies social sciences. And maybe more surprisingly, you'll be earning as much, perhaps a little more, than people who are doing things like biology, psychology, according to some

surveys, physics. So the notion that the only way to go is STEM, and this is nothing at all against STEM subjects, is that notion is simply wrong. I'm obviously the worst person on earth to be conducting this interview because I'm obsessed with history and have devoted my whole life to it as have you guys. But I mean, let's deal with the first silo, if you like, about making us better citizens, more engaged, understanding the world around us, perhaps in an intellectual sense, and then come on to the life skills. Mary Fulbrook on the podcast the other day, who just, I will never forget the interview, and she talks so passionately and incisively about the Holocaust and the descent of Germany, one of the most civilized nations in the world, into barbarism, almost unparalleled in the history of the human race, and what that story means for societies and individuals, and in terms of us avoiding a repetition. As she's talking about, I think this is the most important subject on earth, avoiding a situation in which we enter a genocidal situation and murdering our fellow citizens.

Nothing could be more important than that. And so I just want to come back to you, Peter, on what you said about this first bracket of things. History is an education, surely, into how we come to terms with our humanity, what we're capable of, both positive and negative range. Yes. The most familiar point, which you've really already touched on, is you need to know history to understand what major mistakes various societies have made in the past in hopes that they can be avoided. The Holocaust example is a great one. It's a dark one. So you need history to know what's gone wrong with the hope that some of these mistakes can be avoided. But you also emphasize, and this deserves real consideration, you also emphasize history also gives us the opportunity to understand things that have gone right in the past.

One of the things that obviously crops up in my neck of the woods right now, given these protests, is the example of 1968. This kind of crisis immediately produces a need for history, and we look at 1968 both to understand what was done wrong back then with regard to the treatment of civil rights protesters, but also very clearly what was done right, what messages they sent that resonated, what examples of productive outcomes we need to emulate. So you avoid mistakes, but you also benefit from looking at past positives. But the other thing to stress, in addition to looking to the past, for example, is you also get a sense of the way contemporary issues have formed over time. This is slightly different from the mistakes and successes.

You understand how society develops patterns that have emerged from the past, particularly the recent past, but often you have to go well back. And that's a second channel that gives you understanding about what's going on now and an orientation toward what we might do about contemporary problems. It's funny, Peter, in Britain we've occasionally suffered a moment of national insecurity around domestic terrorism about 10 years ago with a spate of Islamist attacks or more recently perhaps with fake news. And there is talk about kind of we can teach our kids, we can teach them civics lessons or we can teach them how to avoid propaganda. And I'm like, you're literally describing history I mean that's the whole purpose of history right is a tell everyone what on earth we're all doing here and how we can govern and change that polity but also how you evaluate sources and work out what people are telling you and whether that Facebook post from your mad uncle is actually accurate we keep

circling around trying to reinvent basically a good solid historical education land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows

or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. There are new episodes every week. I am slightly of a different view about the use of history as civics. I think if you need to study the Holocaust to learn that you don't commit mass murder, then something is really seriously wrong with you. You don't need historical precedence to understand the iniquity of that. And in fact, I think history is often much better at showing you the complexity of events, not and 68, I think, is a very good analogy

to bring that to prominence in that if you think about 68 and the disturbances after the assassination of Martin Luther King, that was also in a presidential election year. There was a Republican who was running on a law and order platform who successfully managed to portray these demonstrations as disorder and chaos and to target the Democratic Party as a fourth column of these rioters as he would see them. Now, you can see where I'm going here. So this, I think we would probably all agree, these demonstrations are a very valid response to a great historical wrong. But if we look at history, comparing now to 1968, exactly the ramifications of this, the consequences of this, are far from certain. Absolutely. Let's follow on, though, in terms of the fake news discussion,

the inoculating young people, frankly, anybody against this avalanche of inaccurate, you know, alternative facts, people might call them. It does strike me that history has a role to play in educating in that department. Absolutely. You obviously mentioned quite correctly that the study of history involves heavy use of evidence and assessments of the validity of evidence, testing evidence against bias and point of view. And just as a matter of fact, history students do better on diagnosing fake news than the average university student. We train quite directly in this without necessarily hitting them over the head with purely contemporary illustrations. So this is a direct connection, and as you suggest, a very important one. One of the things that didn't quite make the cut in the book, but perhaps relates to what you're asking, is that we looked at how Donald Trump used history.

And in many ways, he's a master rhetorician in the sort of dark arts of using logical fallacies. And I think historians can almost see the slight of hand used by a magician like Donald Trump and not just have a vague sense of that Donald Trump is trying to pull one over on us, but also to identify exactly the rhetorical tricks that he's using and expose how people can argue very effectively, but misleadingly and illogically. And so in that sense, I think Trump is a sort of anti-historian. And historians in producing considered, balanced, judicious arguments can play a useful role in correcting what is a very dangerous tendency in current public discourse. We've automatically really meandered into that second sort of silo which is that the life skills if you like the intellectual training the thing that's useful

in anyone's profession job when you're good you just are provided with a huge amount of information and you can sift it assimilate it test it and then synthesize it and presumably that you would argue is a very useful skill in nearly any career. I think we would argue that, but it's not really just us who argue it. So every year, the National Association of Colleges and Employers in the United States ask firms what they're looking for in job applicants, apart from just a good degree. in job applicants, apart from just a good degree. And the lists that they produce put right at the top things like written communication, problem solving, initiative, things that any half-decent history degree will train people in. So I think that people uncertain about studying history might think that this is all, you know, well and good to write a whole bunch of essays about Mughal emperors, but who's going to

hire me? I think that the answer is all of these firms are interested in exactly the skills that those inculcate and more than that I think that students who recognize this can then tailor their educations to maximize their opportunities and use their degree as a springboard to a good career. This means that the fact that history students get good jobs which we obviously emphasize against some common impressions, is not accidental. It follows from the nature of history training, and the connections are very real. And the other point that Marcus made really needs emphasis. Students themselves, and we hope the book helps here, students themselves need to be able to say what they've learned from history that connects to the job market. And the more explicit and articulate they are there, the better they'll do.

So those who go into history can do things that will maximize their opportunities. And that's one of the things we try to emphasize in the book. It all seems so obvious to us, and I'm sure to many of the listeners. So why did you guys have to write this book? What does it say about our world? Why does it feel under threat? Well, the most obvious reason is this pervasive sense that we live in a world where narrow utility is the measure of education, and history does not provide utility. We argue, I believe quite accurately, that it does provide utility. The jobs data are very clear, though we would also say that a purely utilitarian evaluation

of higher education is simply a mistake. It would be a mistake for college students themselves, and it's a mistake for society. So we try a little bit to have our cake and eat it too, and it's a mistake for society. So we try a little bit to have our cake and eat it too, but we really believe both points. I think that degrees are so expensive now, it's such a large investment of money to make, that it's natural that people who are thinking of going to university

and their teachers and their parents are wanting to find safe bets to invest this money in. And without having gone through the vast amount of data that we did for this book, it seems pretty obvious, and it's certainly something that is reiterated in the media, that there are law degrees and medical degrees or pre-med and pre-law and engineering degrees that is an extremely understandable, but as it turns out, factually incorrect assumption to make. And so one of the things we've tried to do in this book is to really provide all of the evidence that people need to make the decisions for themselves. And we're not cheerleaders for history. Obviously, we have devoted our lives, like yourself, to studying this, but we know it's not for everybody. And we don't, you know, have a product to sell in the sense of wishing everybody would study history. One of the,

I think, problems that exist now is that the information that people get when they're choosing what to study, where to study, is partial information. It is often the truth, but it's very seldom the whole truth. Every university has an incentive to accentuate the positives. Every league table is only as good as the numbers that go into it. And the amount of dispassionate disinterested information reliable information that you can get is actually quite limited unless you do the kind of spade work that we've done for this book where we've looked at all of the employment statistics and salary statistics and compared curricula across Britain and the United States in every single university we can get information on and compared what people study at school to

what people study at university. So we've tried to do, you know, a lot of the heavy lifting for prospective students and their parents, and I think current students who are thinking, what can I do with a history degree? From the published sources and also your anecdotal experience, does it feel like we're coming out the side of a trough? I mean, I went to university to do history at the turn of the century. It felt weird. Francis Fukuyama talking about the end of history. The 90s felt like a period in which, and Tony Blair articulated a sense that we had moved into a new space in which history was less important for states, men and women, and urged everyone to become scientists, etc. You'll remember those heady days. Does it feel like history is now

screaming back at us as we have climate crisis, pandemic disease, great power confrontation, and all sorts of other stuff going on that feels more familiar historically? Are you seeing an uptick now? And is this book part of a sort of a revision of the era in which I studied? Well, we can't answer. I would like to think that we will come out of this and the book will, in some modest way, contribute to a reassessment of why history is important. But I do think the basic point you make is quite valid. As we've already said,

the crises that we're currently experiencing, the pandemic, the civil rights unrest in the United States, these obviously immediately call history to mind. You simply can't orient yourself in these crises without some sense of what's happened before and also the ways that contemporary situations are different from what's happened before. And both of those issues are historical. So the notion that we're floating in some brand new society that has no need for precedent or for attention to the trends that brought us here.

This is simply inaccurate. And I do think there's wide public recognition of this. How this will translate into history learning, we don't yet know. But the connections are quite valid. I would just simply endorse all of that. Well, Marcus, thank you very much in that case. Guys, thank you very much for coming on this podcast. The book's already receiving rave reviews. I hope it's really widely shared among, frankly, young and old, but particularly maybe young people who are thinking about it. I meet so many 16-year-olds, 17-year-olds who love history, but are being kind of talked out of it, studying it undergrad. And I just wish they would read this book so thank you very much gentlemen

the book is called Why Study History there you go, available on both sides of the Atlantic, get it everybody thank you gentlemen cheers Dan music music music

music music hi everyone it's me Dan Snow, just a quick request it's so annoying and I hate it when other podcasts I'm not going to't subscribe to my TV channel. I understand if you don't buy my calendar, but this is free. Come on, do me a favour. Thanks.