Why should we study history?

I will start off the discussion with the bold assertion that I do not know history. (There you go, I just stripped myself of any authority of writing this article).

Nevertheless, there circulates around young people today an association between history and residue, between history and waste of time. The historical foundations of university subjects are regarded as 'filler courses' and are studied, by the truly diligent, the week before the exam. Except when it comes to football or cars, knowing history rather than craft is seen as trivial and truly useless. While this may be grounded on the empowering belief that 'we know better', my contention is that the attitude is societally deleterious.

The whole debate started due to my customary nosiness. I was surrounded by four people at a dinner - two students of economics and banking and two studying aeronautical engineering. Feeling blissfully ignorant about the content of the latter, exotically sounding subject, I started to ask my companions what aeronautical engineering practically entails. They were, quite naturally of people busying themselves with relatively new occupations, relatively usure of what exactly they were doing - or how to explain it to a layman such as myself. Indeed, they would rather assert what they were not doing. So my question of whether they would eventually get down and dirty and build actual aeroplanes was met with a definite 'nooo!'. 'We are more like designers of aeroplanes, we come up with the concept'. 'All right', I said, 'that means you are more like the architects, and the aeroplane mechanics are like the builders, right?'. 'Yeah, something like that' (At a later point in the discussion the same person let me know that they 'just apply the formulas and voila, the aeroplane is built', which had the numbing effect of restoring me to deep confusion, the exact point I had started from). At this point, to make my hard-headedness less obvious, I inquired whether they had heard of Traian Vuia, of whom I knew had invented the jet plane - and was Romanian, so I could win status points with him. All hell broke loose.

With faces reminiscent of European students at their first Chinese class, eyebrows swung into the air, jaws slightly dropping, bulging eyeballs, body poised forward like cheetas before leaping for a wounded antelope, the two aeronautical engineers seemed by this time ready to present their fingers, perhaps with complimentary audio effects. 'Whaaat?! Why should I know that? Like what was that anyway? Is that like even a real person?' and so on and so forth. On my hearing that they don't learn any history of their subject at University, and moreover that they see no use for it whatever, I swiftly pulled the comando knife out of the sole of my left shoe - where I keep it just for these occasions -, leapt on the table and, before the girl could blink, I swung the cool, sharp blade toward her neck, stopping nanometres in front of her throbbing jugular. I was going to give her a good reason to study history.
Well, no I didn't. But I amaze myself how it always surprises me (you see how I dodged the double 'surprise', he?) when people have different opinions than mine. I mean, the nerve on them. And this time it was serious. I was just about to set things straight with a flawless rhetoric, when the bill was presented to us and the tension evaporated (worthwhile to notice this is one of the very few instances when money alleviate tension).

Indeed, why should we study history? It's a freakin good question, if you think about it. What good can history possibly do us, what problems will it solve? History is inescapably a has-been, and has-beens don't matter in the modern world. We are looking at the future now, with a lens from the present. The past was yesterday or last weekend in the pub. Get a grip, shake off that naivité and let go of history. As one memorable Richard put it, Bygones! (those fans of Ally McBeal out there will surely resonate).

*to be continued*