Critical thinking through philosophy might be a way to expand this argument. It is inclusive of history but adds relevance to the content.

Learning to translate the ideas behind the history of human thought helps us understand what motivated the events of history particularly if changing the re-productive patterns of war - poverty and terror COUNTS?

There are no hero's in war as far as I am concerned. There is courage YES but a lot of ill-faithed blood lost because of idealic worship of leaders who were motivated by issues other than their own citizenship.

I adore learning but feel history itself lacks the depth of content we need to understand the development of humanity. I believe we make the same mistakes, repeating the history... mindless of the socio-economic strategies and other indices that might otherwise identify better the surrounding circumstance.

http://www.miacat.com
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Actually I think history is very much about dates and places.

For example, one recurring theme in Australian public debate today is how the Iraq war has made all the Islamo-fascists hate us. Yet very often those speaking in public trip up on the historical fact that the BALI bombing which killed 88 aussies plus 3 of our residents happened BEFORE the March 2003 Invasion of IRAQ. In fact, many of the debaters seem NOT to have memorised this fact of history. This error places a quite different complexion on the war against terror in our region regardless of whether you support it or not (i.e. what you feel about it).

Read Abu Bakr Bashir's comments to his mosque audience only 6 days after the mass homicide and see whether Iraq has anything at all to do with his long-held belief that, as he said, "there will be forever a ravine of hate between us".

Historians and citizens alike must not succumb to "themes" of history only. And I think the selection of certain "themes" for study usually says much more about our modern biases then it does of the past itself.

History is not entertainment and didn't occur only to be manipulated by scriptwriters and SFX staff. It had chronology and historians are the continuity department on which we depend for our individual interpretations.

Learning history helps us understand who we are, who we were and we must learn the facts as well as "themes". It's more vital that our students understand exactly WHEN something happened than dictate to them through invented themes what they must 'feel' about it.

Here's another recent example of date confusion. The Wall Street Journal gets it right, the NY Times as usual has history theme monkeys without a memory on its staff.

Don't Know Much About History
From the New York Times:

..."It was President Bush who, a year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, rewrote America's national security strategy to warn any nation that might be thinking of trying to develop atomic weapons that it could find itself the target of a pre-emptive military strike. . . .

This time it was the Israelis who invoked Mr. Bush's doctrine, determining that what they believed was a nascent Syrian effort to build a nuclear reactor could not be tolerated."

[WSJ] Perhaps the Times has forgotten that in 1981, when Bush was just a Texas oil man, the Israelis bombed a nuclear reactor in Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein's regime from acquiring a nuclear weapon. To say that Jerusalem is following "Bush's doctrine" is like saying the Jews have embraced the Christian concept of monotheism.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/washington/15assess.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Dresdener: "...our nation's place as an outpost of the Occident"

How quaint. No wonder you see yourself besieged by those insidious non-Westerners. And there I was thinking that events like the Boxer Rebellion and the Black Hole of Calcutta were history (that I learned at school 40 or so years ago, now that I think of it).

Actually, I agree with you when you say that "the systematic study of Western civilisation in both Australian high schools and universities is sorely lacking". Certainly, such a study would include a history of the development of democracy in Europe, the rise of mercantilism, colonialism and capitalism, their connections with the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, and all those factors that helped create the phenomenal mess the world's in now.

Such an education might assist in the inevitable understanding that Australia's status as "an outpost of the Occident" was an historically temporary phase in the ever-changing geopolitical histories of our region and planet. Certainly, many correspondents to this forum (including Dresdener) would benefit from such an education in history.

In your mind, History is what you have been allowed to read, muddled with numerous counterfeit conditional thought processes, you will believe what you think you know...

Actually history teaches us that no country or control of that country ever remains forever in the hands of one ethnic group at least not without some savage bloodshed and massive purging (ethnic cleansing) by one group against another at some point in the countrys history. The real truth of history is too scary for us so we invent a new history for ourselves.

We teach that our history will be different. That we are all somehow changed from our previous human form and now we are all sweetness and love and tolerance