Speaking about critical thinking: has this assertion been tested? What was the definition of critical thinking in the article? I couldn't see one that the author gave.
So called "Critical thinking" is a collection of skills and history only maps to some of them. The skills that I believe history fosters at the margin, i.e. independently of any other subject, are the following:
- For intellectual history: understanding not only that an idea might have "prior art" that can be worth learning from (to evade errors, to find interpretations you didn't consider), but also understanding the lineage of how the idea was constructed and passed on, calibrates you as to both the originality and the level of independent confirmation you can give to it. If many people come to the same conclusion from different angles, great! But in all likelihood the idea has a few core progenitors that everyone is drawing from. If this is the case, then you know to discount the fact that "everyone is doing it" away from your evaluation of the idea, and focus on the original source itself and maybe a few key proponents.
- For societal history: too often I think we underestimate what is possible for human beings to do or achieve, both the height of our accomplishments and the depth of our horrors. Societal history also lets us understand what we have precedents for, which is critical in law. I don't believe it is much use to use history for "trend-seeking", not without some conceptual augmentation (see below cf. economics), but it can definitely help to lower your surprise.
- For historiography: taking the notion "primary", "secondary", "tertiary" etc hierarchy of sources to heart, and the level of prior validity you can expect from each one, lets you understand how difficult it is to separate bias from an account of an experience, as well as encourage coming to your own interpretations by seeking the original data.
However, despite these advantages, I don't think that history is the best field for critical thinking. I believe that trophy should go to economics. Why? The reason being that economics is a field of endeavor that is a source of non-narrative (read: not bullshit prone) explanations of historical phenomena, but also extends these models to the present day and even could allow predictions of the future. Other than citing precedent and giving you evidence to feed into your thinking, history alone doesn't directly let you do this in a fashion I would consider acceptable.
IME, having competed undergraduate studies in economics, it has a huge indoctrination blind spot in that as typically taught, the theories are presented as hard rules and students generally aren't exposed to more than one economic theory in depth. Study time is spent in a performance of mathematical theatre, extrapolating broad notions of how society behaves from simplified models. Some of it has useful explanatory power - especially micro economic theories that have plenty of experimental backing - but just as often there is a design constraint of "our options as policy makers are x, y, and z because those are what are in our model." And this is not probed so actively at the undergraduate level - to do the homework and pass the tests you have to answer "yes, of course z is the best policy, because our textbook model says so." Which, I suppose, is like high school history and its tendency to use a singular narrative of cause and consequence, but with some symbols thrown in. It is deceptively universalizing.
Agreed about the usefulness of history! It also teaches the useful skill of inferring truth from multiple sources of varying reliability.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem optimized for drawing in the right people. Professional/academic historian work is very different from all the "history" you take up to that point; before that level, it's mostly "memorize a bunch of stuff that happened, as inferred by historians doing the interesting work".
How would that draw in the people who have aptitude for real historian work?
It overlaps with journalism closely enough to the point where great history is just great journalism, just long-form. I imagine that aspiring journalists head straight to some technical school when they could do well to supplement some humanities work as well.
In hindsight, my choices in high school were probably gearing me up to become a competent journalist. I decided to develop my aptitude for computing instead. I don't regret it, though: the skills and models of higher-level geography and history have been essential in keeping me based rather than basic in 2016.
Economics is also the source and home of some of the most bullshit-prone theories and explanations. That's why I ultimately dropped my Economics major. It's full of people that got into the field precisely due to their passion for of their highly politicized opinions. Those people generate elaborate theories, data sets, and models to justify their almost always a priori beliefs -- always under the guise of supposedly rational debate.
I would argue -- as a non-physicist and non-biologist and non-chemist -- that physics or biology or chemistry should take the crown. All explain historical phenomena via models and also extend those models to the present day and even the future, allowing eminently testable predictions. Additionally, the questions these fields pose are typically but not always far less likely to ground out in political preference and are therefore less susceptible (though not invincible) to bullshit.
I was, and still am extremely grateful for my microeconomics prof: he is a contrarian (http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canadian-economist-never-k...) that forced us to reason on a wide class of non-societal examples from first principles whenever possible. As far as being politicized goes, macroecon seems to be a bit more plagued than micro, mod any "homo economicus" fallacies.
So called "Critical thinking" is a collection of skills and history only maps to some of them. The skills that I believe history fosters at the margin, i.e. independently of any other subject, are the following:
- For intellectual history: understanding not only that an idea might have "prior art" that can be worth learning from (to evade errors, to find interpretations you didn't consider), but also understanding the lineage of how the idea was constructed and passed on, calibrates you as to both the originality and the level of independent confirmation you can give to it. If many people come to the same conclusion from different angles, great! But in all likelihood the idea has a few core progenitors that everyone is drawing from. If this is the case, then you know to discount the fact that "everyone is doing it" away from your evaluation of the idea, and focus on the original source itself and maybe a few key proponents.
- For societal history: too often I think we underestimate what is possible for human beings to do or achieve, both the height of our accomplishments and the depth of our horrors. Societal history also lets us understand what we have precedents for, which is critical in law. I don't believe it is much use to use history for "trend-seeking", not without some conceptual augmentation (see below cf. economics), but it can definitely help to lower your surprise.
- For historiography: taking the notion "primary", "secondary", "tertiary" etc hierarchy of sources to heart, and the level of prior validity you can expect from each one, lets you understand how difficult it is to separate bias from an account of an experience, as well as encourage coming to your own interpretations by seeking the original data.
However, despite these advantages, I don't think that history is the best field for critical thinking. I believe that trophy should go to economics. Why? The reason being that economics is a field of endeavor that is a source of non-narrative (read: not bullshit prone) explanations of historical phenomena, but also extends these models to the present day and even could allow predictions of the future. Other than citing precedent and giving you evidence to feed into your thinking, history alone doesn't directly let you do this in a fashion I would consider acceptable.