From Karl Marx’s mentor:
“The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.” -Hegel, Friedrich
It is a great four-star quote, and he’s right.
The guts of a history class used to be that you laid out mortal men, the dilemmas of the time, and the thinking or decision process that was involved.
At some point, history classes just became dates and names....memorize everything and after the test, dump the info.
When you engage people with history, putting them in the Captain’s chair, and having to make a decision....they then learn the art of history and decision-making. You avoid repeating history....or in some cases, you repeat history because the last time was pretty successful.