{"id":5285,"date":"2019-05-08T14:44:06","date_gmt":"2019-05-08T12:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/?p=5285"},"modified":"2019-05-08T14:46:29","modified_gmt":"2019-05-08T12:46:29","slug":"the-decline-of-historical-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/?p=5285","title":{"rendered":"The Decline of Historical Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/news-desk\/the-decline-of-historical-thinking\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Eric Alterman<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u2026for the past decade, history has been declining more rapidly than any other major, even as more and more students attend college. With slightly more than twenty-four thousand current history majors, it accounts for between one and two per cent of bachelor\u2019s degrees, a drop of about a third since 2011. The decline can be found in almost all ethnic and racial groups, and among both men and women. Geographically, it is most pronounced in the Midwest, but it is present virtually everywhere.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a catch, however. It\u2019s boom time for history at Yale, where it is the third most popular major, and at other \u00e9lite schools, including Brown, Princeton, and Columbia, where it continues to be among the top declared majors.\u2026<\/p>\n<p>The reason that students at Yale and places like it can \u201cafford\u201d to major in history is that they have the luxury of seeing college as a chance to learn about the world beyond the confines of their home towns, and to try to understand where they might fit in. That\u2019s what history does best. It locates us and helps us understand how we got here and why things are the way they are. \u201cHistory instills a sense of citizenship, and reminds you of questions to ask, especially about evidence,\u201d&nbsp;\u2026 \u201cA study of the past shows us that the only way to understand the present is to embrace the messiness of politics, culture, and economics. There are never easy answers to pressing questions about the world and public life.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eric Alterman: \u2026for the past decade, history has been declining more rapidly than any other major, even as more and more students attend college. With slightly more than twenty-four thousand current history majors, it accounts for between one and two &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/?p=5285\">Weiterlesen <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}