Is history important?

Studying history does not prepare students for their careers

Question: Is history important?
Position‹2 of 2: History is not important
Argument‹2 of 3›: Studying history does not prepare students for their careers

The time spent on studying history could be better used for taking courses which will further students' careers.

The argument

History does not contribute to the skills students need for their careers. There is no point in studying useless facts and dates which are irrelevant to our day to day lives. Knowing what happened in the past does not help us to understand our futures. The time students spend on learning history could be better spent on taking courses on current social, civics, and economics courses which have an impact on our our daily lives. Our careers and futures depend on knowing what is in the here and now - not on what happened a hundred, a thousand, or even 10,000+ years ago.

Premises

[P1]History does not build the skills students need for careers, and knowing past facts and dates does not help us understand our futures. [P2] The time spent on history would be better used on current social, civics, and economics courses that affect daily life, since careers depend on the here and now. [C] Therefore, because studying history does not prepare students for their careers, history is not important.

Counter-arguments

There are plenty of careers which benefit from or rely upon evidence from historical records to make decisions or advances in their field. Some of them, such as those relating to the government, law, and economy, are critical to keeping our society in order.

Rejecting the premises

[P1]Doctors use a patient's medical history to help in diagnosing or predicting medical conditions. Further, understanding the progression of certain diseases in the past helps us to understand how to combat them in the present.