 |
| iStock |
"To be ignorant of what has occurred before you were born is to remain always a child."
—Cicero
On November 4, 2011, during a lecture at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough (John Adams, 1776, Truman) rephrased Cicero's quote to say, "A leader who does not read and study history has the outlook of a child."
Regardless of which version is preferred, the quote explains the current state of ingenuous leadership, as history teaches us how to behave. Unnecessary mistakes are repeated when learning from the mistakes of others is absent.
The problem's source
Scholar and friend, Dr. Stan Ingersol, educated at Duke University, observes that we don't truly know history. "Historical ignorance is pervasive. The study requires a prerequisite interest that many people do not have," he notes. Dr. Ingersol goes on to say, "That in place of serious historical study, people then create myths about the past and use those myths to guide their thinking."
A 2018 analysis by the American Historical Association found that since the 2008 recession, history has suffered the steepest decline in undergraduate majors among all humanities disciplines. Data from the University of Michigan suggest that this downward trend is national, although not inevitable.
Eighth graders' knowledge of both history and civics fell significantly between 2018 and 2022, according to the latest scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). After modest increases over the last few decades, performance in both subjects has returned to levels measured in the 1990s, when the subjects were first tested, according to The 74 website, a statistical educational database.
Taken together, the scores provide only the latest evidence of declining U.S. academic performance across a range of disciplines, says the report.
Learning from history
B. H. Liddell Hart (1895-1970) was a military historian who wrote tracts on Sherman, Rommel, and the principles of military strategy. His insight into human nature, as seen through the lens of war's folly, of which Hart was active in three (WWI, WWII, and the Cold War), may be his most significant contribution to the topic.
In Why We Don't Learn from History, here are Hart's invaluable lessons:
- We begin with the importance of the truth that man could, by rational process, discover truth about himself—and about life. That this discovery was without value unless its expression resulted in action as well as education. To this end, he valued accuracy and lucidity.
- The object of history is to determine what has happened while trying to understand why it happened. History has limitations as a guiding signpost, for although it can show us the right direction, it does not give detailed information about the road conditions.
- Even if history does not teach us what to do, we can learn what to avoid by identifying the most common mistakes that mankind is apt to make and repeat. Learn by experience or profit by the experience of others.
- History is the record of man's steps and slips. It shows us that the steps have been slow and slight; the slips quick and abounding. It provides us with the opportunity to profit from the successes and failures of our predecessors.
- That history is the corrective to all speculation.
First, there was Ken Burns on an old medium—broadcast television. The Civil War, Baseball, and The Vietnam War are highly rated productions that informed diverse audiences. Burns' newest documentary, The American Revolution, premieres this November 16.
Now, with the advent of technology, the market for "people stories" is expanding into new realms.
Published reports indicate that the business of history is thriving in audio, with the genre becoming one of the most successful in the podcasting industry.
Podcasts like The Rest Is History attract large audiences. Hosted by historian and author Dominic Sandbrook and popular historian Tom Holland, this podcast, launched in November 2020, is the highest-ranked U.K. podcast on Spotify and Apple and in the top ten on U.S. charts.
In October of 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported that The Rest Is History achieved 11 million downloads per month. And that seven out of ten listeners were under the age of 40.
Story-telling is a powerful medium.
There is a surge in sales of history books. In the U.S., history was one of the few book categories to experience growth, with sales increasing by about 6%. In the U.K. and Ireland, sales of history books reached their highest levels since record-keeping began.
What about streaming? Nonfiction programming, including historical documentaries, is a rapidly growing category on platforms like Netflix. That kind of access has helped programs like "Roman Empire" and "Testament: The Story of Moses" reach a broader audience and increase funding for production.
Concludes one industry expert: "The apparent contradiction between the decline in academic history and the rise of popular history media reflects a broader trend in how the public engages with the past."
Why history matters
Peggy Noonan, a Pulitzer Prize winner herself, draws our attention to a newly published volume, History Matters, from Simon & Schuster, which features a collection of David McCullough's essays, interviews, and speeches.
In that book, McCullough, who passed in 2022, and who wrote all fifteen books on a second-hand Royal manual typewriter, offers this reminder: "History teaches, reinforces what we believe in, what we stand for, and what we ought to be willing to stand up for."
"At their core, the lessons of history are largely lessons of appreciation," he writes.
Everything we have, he says, all the great institutions, the arts, our law, exists because those who came before us built them. Why did they do that? What drove them, what obstacles did they face, and how are we doing as stewards and creators?
"Indifference to history isn't just ignorant, it's rude," McCullough notes.
Is learning about the history of your organization worthwhile? Could that exercise provide a new perspective on why it exists, what it believes in, what it stands for, and the sacrifices made to arrive at this moment?
While information is abundant and AI is an increasingly prevalent reality, the well-springs of institutional knowledge are running dry.
Regardless of the season, now is the time to draw from those fountains of wisdom and experience. Not to know what to do, but to avoid the most common, repeatable, and costly mistakes of the past.
Strategist.com
© Bredholt & Co.
