History Courses are Among the Most Popular in U3A
By Ralph Blumenau

This article appeared in the November, 2005 issue of Sources, a publication of the Third Age Trust, the national organization of U3As in the UK. and is reprinted here with permission.

“History is just the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes.” …Voltaire

History is one of the most accessible of subjects for all sorts of reasons.

Many members of U3A want to learn new skills, and may attend a language course or a science course from scratch. In those cases there is a lot of groundwork to be laid before you can make any real progress.

But for those who are not quite so ambitious, a history course requires no special preparation – you don’t have to acquire any special skills.

You can jump in at almost any point although you do have to have studied the 18th century before you can study the 19th or 20th. And of course it would deepen your appreciation if you could relate the period you are studying to an earlier one – or indeed to a later one.

History is a form of story telling, an ancient art that casts spells over young and old. And this particular form of story telling is not only fascinating, but also necessary to give us a sense of who we are and how we got to be what we are.

The necessity of this has been felt down the ages. Even pre-literate societies appointed remembrancers to satisfy this need. The fact that they often were praise-singers of their own societies had its dangers. Today’s remembrancers should have wider responsibilities.

Every field of human activity can be embraced by history. The Roman playwright Terence wrote: homo sum: nil humanum mihi alienum est: “as a human being, no area of human activity lies outside my range of interest.”

So it should be with the historian. It is not only political and economic history, but also the entire history of culture, of the arts, of the sciences, of religion, of philosophy, that should engage his interest. Whatever knowledge you have, whatever surroundings you live in, it is life-enhancing if you are aware of these in the extra dimension of the past.

In this respect, local history is especially rewarding. A landscape, a townscape, a village, a river or a mountain range, a railway or a cathedral, acquires a special resonance if you can appreciate each one in that extra dimension. And when we engage with the thoughts of the great figures of the past, we cannot help gaining in some wisdom ourselves.

True history is also excellent training in citizenship, because it should broaden our perspectives and our understanding, and possibly widen our tolerance and appreciation of ways of thinking and of living that are different from our own.

There is no subject like History to teach us that there are many sides to every question – to acquire empathy for different points of view seen from within,. History should help us to understand the values of past civilizations or of the civilizations of other parts of the world in their own terms, and not judge them by the standards that we may hold ourselves.

This kind of understanding is particularly needful in today’s multi-racial societies and in an increasingly interdependent and international environment.

If in the end we reject a particular point of view, it will not be out of narrowness or prejudice, but will be after we have understood as fully as we can what it is that we reject..

Where conflicts in the world are unavoidable, it helps us to understand their often-ancient roots, and if we do have to confront opponents, that confrontation will be the more intelligent for that understanding.

While some history courses will teach us a deeper appreciation of the culture of our own society, we should learn to avoid cultural jingoism, and see through the distortions and abuses of history that serve propagandistic aims.

It is not surprising that the pursuit of genuine history has always been anathema to dictatorships.

To sum up: History should open up wide perspectives, show the interrelation of fields of study and provide encouragement to explore them. No one can possibly hope to cover more than a small part of this wealth, but we can hope to do enough to make us aware of the infinite variety of man’s activities and achievement on this planet.

It should prevent our thinking from being narrow, compartmentalized and insular. It should make us citizens of the world,. It is a grand aim, but then History is a grand subject.