Trial by ordeal, and many of the torturous methods of obtaining the Legally, courts, jury trials,Ĭircuit-riding judges, constitutions all found early starts in Greece and later The few over the many, to government by majority. Government from aristocracy, oligarchy, to democracy. Politically, Western Civilization has been the test-bed of
They are the benefactor of centuries of political, social, and legalĭevelopment. Studying His 101 (or His 102) demonstrates to the student that They are relevant/not for understanding the world today. It will make you sound much smarter."ĭiscussions about art, religion, or the ancient Greeks/Romans and how (Western Civ) you will be way more likely to understand some of theĬomments people make at parties. Heard for those who will NEVER take a history class again is: Connecting the dots to generations of dead people brings them alive. As Desmond Tutu once said, "we learn from history that we don't learn from history!" It becomes much easier for a student to empathize with Charlemagne, for example, when the student realizes first, that she or he is possibly descended from him, and second, that there are the proverbial "six degrees of separation" between Charlemagne and the student.
When we convince students that people in the past got into the same scrapes as they do, argued over the same issues they argue over, and that they make the same mistakes, we see a common vulnerability. And some have a prejudice against dead people. "This has nothing to do with me because these people are all dead." Some people are racists. But the more I contemplated it, the more I started to realize a main reason that so many students don't care for history. Chesterton once referred to history as "the democracy of the Dead." As an avid fan of history, I had a sense of what he meant. Social issues and outside causes (like many countries and societies By studying the Roman Empire we see howĪ society can rise to greatness and fall because of political and We see the beginnings of a civilized society. We learn about the origins of our laws and justice system.