Why do we still need to study history? Read "Becoming a Person of History"

小时候，我曾经很羡慕我的小阿姨。

她那时候念台湾师范大学历史系。 For me, who was still young and didn’t have much idea about universities, the words “Department of History” had an indescribable sense of mystery. The books she read were very thick, and they were full of names of people, places, and eras that I didn’t recognize. There seemed to be a world on the desk that was far away from real life, but that I couldn’t help but want to get closer to.

Maybe it was from that time that I had a very strange fondness for history.

I did not really embark on the path of historical research. I later studied in other departments and worked in media, content, marketing, and management. I also wrote books and taught classes along the way. In recent years, I have devoted a lot of time to artificial intelligence and academic research. But after going around in a big circle, I discovered more and more: many of the abilities that I think are important today actually have an unexpectedly profound relationship with historical thinking.

For example, when faced with something, don’t rush to ask “What is the answer?” but first ask: Why did it become what it is today?

一个人的选择从哪里来？一个制度为什么形成？ How does an idea suddenly become taken for granted in a certain era? Is the result we see today accidental, someone’s decision, or the product of a series of political, economic, technological and social conditions?

If we ask deeper, we can even ask: If a certain condition was different at that time, would things have gone another way?

These questions, on the surface, are asking about history, but in fact they are also questions that we encounter every day when we understand business, society, technology and life today.

Therefore, read Teacher Wu Yirong’s “Becoming a person with history: From A++ thinking to historical thinking, cultivating the ability to understand the world (opens in a new tab)” What impressed me most was not how much historical knowledge I learned, but that she reminded me of one thing again: the real importance of history is never “knowing a lot of what happened in the past”, but learning how to understand why things turned out the way they do now.

这一点，在 AI 时代尤其重要。

When answers become cheaper, understanding becomes more expensive

If you go back ten or twenty years ago, a person who knew a lot of things would have considerable advantages.

You know what happened in a certain era, how a certain law stipulates, and who proposed a certain theory. This information is not necessarily easy to obtain, so memory and knowledge themselves have value.

But today is different.

We can ask ChatGPT, search Google, check Wikipedia, or ask AI to help us organize the chronology, compare people, explain the background of the war, and even generate a decent-looking research summary in a few dozen seconds.

At first glance, knowledge seems so cheap for the first time.

可是，问题也正是在这里。

When everyone can get answers quickly, the real difference between us is no longer just “who knows more”, but who can judge which information is important, which causal relationships are established, which narratives are oversimplified, and which seemingly reasonable answers actually sneak in false premises.

Having said that, this is the core spirit of this book that I like very much.

Teacher Wu Yirong constantly pulls the history class from What to Why.

Instead of just asking “what happened”, continue to ask “why it happened”.

而我什至会想再加上一层：

What is information.

Why is understanding.

So what is the judgment.

If we only stop at What, AI can do it almost faster than us; but from Why to So what, we still need human knowledge structure, experience, value judgment, and understanding of the situation.

Therefore, I increasingly feel that the really important education in the AI ​​​​era is not to teach children how to know more than the machine, but to let them have a thick enough cognitive chassis to know what to think next after getting the answer.

And history happens to be an excellent training in thinking.

”History” is not the answer, but a huge library of human cases

我读这本书时，一直想到另一件事。

If we use the language of business schools, history is actually the largest case study database with the longest time span in the world.

企业管理喜欢研究案例。

为什么 Nokia 失败？

为什么 Kodak 错过数位摄影？

Why does one company succeed in transforming and another does not?

Because we hope to understand the laws behind decisions through the successes and failures of others.

那么历史又何尝不是如此？

The only difference is that history studies not just companies, but countries, religions, wars, systems, classes, technology, culture and the entire human society.

Teacher Wu Yirong has a saying in the book that I like very much: Those who realize later may have to use their own bloodshed to learn lessons; those who understand history can turn the bloodshed of their predecessors into experience points.

这句话乍看幽默，其实很精准。

Because the reason why history is valuable is not because we can recite a bunch of names of our predecessors, but because someone has paid the price for us.

Some people misjudge the situation, some overestimate themselves, and some underestimate the enemy; some make wrong decisions out of fear, and some reverse the situation when resources are at a minimum.

These people had ambitions, prejudices, wisdom, stupidity, and a humanity we are still familiar with today.

Technology will change, systems will change, and media will change, but jealousy, power, fear, greed, loyalty, glory, and collective identity are not that easy to change.

So learning history is actually learning a very practical thing: identifying human nature.

A good history class does not turn students into mobile encyclopedias

Another aspect of this book that impressed me was Teacher Wu Yirong’s frank and even self-deprecating description of the teaching scene.

On the one hand, teachers certainly hope that students will truly understand history; on the other hand, students still have to take exams.

There is always a pull between ideals and reality.

She calls this the terrifying balance between “A++ thinking” and historical thinking.

我很喜欢这个说法。

Because this is not just a dilemma for history teachers, but a common situation for all educators.

We all know that real learning does not equal grades, but the education system cannot be completely without evaluation.

We hope students can think, but exams often have scope, standard answers, and time limits.

The really difficult question is not “should I take the exam” or “should I memorize it”, but rather: how to make necessary memory and true understanding support each other instead of being mutually exclusive.

This is also a point worth discussing in this book.

Teacher Wu Yirong wrote: “Understanding is for more effective memory, and memory is for deeper understanding.”

I totally agree.

When talking about AI education in recent years, I often see a very extreme statement: since AI can be found, students will no longer need to memorize it. This statement sounds very progressive, but it may actually be a dangerous misunderstanding.

Because it is difficult for a person with no knowledge at all to judge whether the AI ​​is right or not.

We are able to understand new information usually because there is already some old information in the brain that can be connected. Just like a master chess player does not start from scratch for every move, but because he has a large number of game patterns in his mind, he can quickly identify the situation in front of him.

The same goes for doctors, lawyers, engineers, journalists, and researchers.

查得到，不代表想得到。 Just because you can find it doesn’t mean you can understand it. Having information does not mean having judgment.

Therefore, a truly good education is not to throw away memories, but to make knowledge the fuel for thinking.

Rather than memorizing the era, I prefer her teaching students to ask “what if”

The part about counterfactual thinking in the book is also very interesting.

Many people like to ask the “what if” of history.

If the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna had admitted Hitler, would World War II not have broken out? If a certain battle had a different general, would the outcome be different? If an emperor died ten years early, would the dynasty be reshaped?

These questions are very interesting, but teacher Wu Yirong reminds that truly valuable counterfactual thinking cannot just be a matter of imagination.

Because history is not a single causal chain.

The Second World War cannot be explained by the existence of one person alone; Hitler is certainly important, but the Versailles System, the Great Depression, German social sentiment, political system failure, nationalism and the international situation also constitute historical conditions.

This reminds me that today we often make the same mistakes when analyzing business, politics, and even AI development.

We too like to look for the “only reason”.

A company is successful because its CEO is great. A company fails because it fails to embrace AI. A certain creator became famous because he mastered the shooting skills of short videos. A country declines because of a certain policy.

The human brain likes simple stories because they are easy to remember. But that’s not how the world usually works. The world is a network of cause and effect, not a straight line of cause and effect.

An important part of historical training is to get us used to asking: What other conditions are there?

Is this result caused by multiple factors? Would the results really change at all if one of them were taken away? Which are necessary conditions and which are just triggers?

I think that just being familiar with these questions is enough to prevent a person from being carried away by many headlines, short videos and inflammatory discussions in today’s information environment.

I also like “helping students bring the right equipment instead of stuffing their luggage”

When the book talks about test preparation, there is a metaphor that made me laugh.

Teacher Wu Yirong said that what teachers should do is to help students bring the right equipment, rather than stuffing their luggage; important knowledge is like a passport, and thinking ability is knowing how to carry the passport and how to plan a journey.

This metaphor is actually very suitable for all learners today.

One of the biggest problems in the AI ​​era is excess information.

In the past, we were afraid of not being able to find information, but now we have too much information.

Open YouTube and there are 300 instructional videos. Open Google and there are millions of results. Ask AI, which can generate five thousand words in one minute.

The really difficult thing has changed from “obtaining” to “sifting”.

So the so-called ability to understand the world does not mean knowing everything.

Instead, know what matters.

Know what knowledge needs to be remembered and what can be looked up. Know what the real key variables of a problem are. Know when to judge and when the evidence is not enough.

This kind of ability becomes increasingly scarce in an era where information becomes more abundant.

What a good teacher really teaches is never just the subject.

By the end of the book, my deepest feeling was not only about history, but also about education.

Teacher Wu Yirong is a very expressive teacher.

She can flashback, create suspense, tell World War I like a murder scene, bring historical figures into the social language that students are familiar with, and is also willing to design situational experiences, games, and digital tools.

But I think what’s really important is not how new these methods are.

What is truly precious is that she is still willing to believe:

Students deserve to be taught well.

This is easier said than done.

Especially when teachers face administrative pressure, exam schedules, reduced classroom hours, digital tool KPIs, parent expectations, and ever-changing education policies, it is easy to slowly degenerate from “teaching students” to “completing the class.”

So when I read her seemingly funny teaching complaints, they actually felt very real.

People who truly love education are not passionate every day. They also get tired, break down, and have doubts.

The only difference is that after the collapse, they are still willing to think again: Is there any other way? Can you teach better?

I think this is the most rare thing about an educational book.

It is not about shaping teachers into saints who are always positive, burning themselves to illuminate others, but after acknowledging the absurdity, exhaustion and limitations of the education scene, they still choose to believe that education has a role.

What does it mean to “become a person with history”?

The title of the book actually came out very well.

It is not “becoming a person who understands history”, but “becoming a person with history”.

After I read it, I kept thinking about the difference between the two.

If you understand history, you may know many events.

Having history is more like a way of looking at the world.

When you see something in front of you, you will know that it did not appear out of thin air.

A system has a history.

A conflict has a context.

A person’s choices have context.

A society’s values ​​today are also the result of the experiences, traumas, interests and choices of many generations.

And when you know that everything has a history, it becomes less easy to regard this moment as eternity.

Things will change.

Tech overlords will change people.

Mainstream values ​​will move.

Things that were once taken for granted may one day become absurd, and ideas that are considered heretical today may become common sense in the next era.

What history gives people is not necessarily the ability to predict the future. It’s more of a humility toward the world. You know today is not the end of the world. You also know that the era you live in is not naturally smarter than all people in the past.

The stronger AI becomes, the more we need history

So, if someone asks me: It’s already 2026, and AI can write articles, check information, organize timelines, and even analyze historical materials, why do we still need to learn history? I would answer this now.

Precisely because AI is so good at answering What, we need to learn to ask Why.

Precisely because AI can quickly generate a plausible story, we need to identify cause and effect, bias, and omissions.

Just because information is becoming more and more accessible, we need to know what knowledge is worth retaining.

And precisely because the future is getting faster and faster, we need a time scale that prevents us from being swept away by the current wave.

It is this measure that history provides.

It takes us a little further away from the present moment.

Let us see that many anxieties that feel unprecedented today have actually been experienced by human beings in different forms.

Let us see that every new technology is accompanied by expectations and fears, every system transformation has beneficiaries and losers, and every generation once thought that it was standing at the most dramatic turning point in history.

When the timeline is stretched, people are less likely to panic.

This may be what I understand by “transparency”.

Don’t know everything.

But even in the midst of changes, you can still see the context.

Looking back I think of my little aunt’s desk

After reading “Becoming a Person with History (opens in a new tab)”, I remembered again when I was a child and watched my aunt study history.

At that time, I didn’t know what the use of those thick books on her desk was.

I just find history fascinating.

Years later, I finally seem to understand better where that fascination comes from.

Because history talks about the past on the surface, but in its heart it is always about people.

How do people choose within limitations?

How do people judge in the face of temptation.

How do people follow blindly in a group.

How people make mistakes in times of crisis and how they get back up again.

So when we read history, what we end up reading is often not the ancients.

But myself.

For this reason, I really like the invitation behind the title “Becoming a Person of History”.

It is not about everyone becoming a historian.

But I hope that when we face this fast, noisy world where answers are readily available, we are still willing to slow down and ask:

Why did things come to this? Am I seeing everything? If you change someone’s position, what will you see? Are there any other possibilities?

And when a person becomes accustomed to asking questions like this, I think he has learned more than just history.

He was beginning to become a man with history.

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📖 Want to read this book?

If you also want to re-understand history, or are thinking about what children in the AI era should learn, I recommend you to read this book by teacher Wu Yirong. Whether you are a teacher, a parent, or simply want to see the world more deeply, you will gain something.

👉 Buy “Becoming a Person with History: From A++ Thinking to Historical Thinking, Cultivating the Ability to See Through the World” on the blog (opens in a new tab)

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【Extended Course】

What this article talks about is actually something I have talked about repeatedly in the classroom this year: AI makes output cheaper, but it is still the job of humans to judge what is worth writing and how to write their own opinions.

If you are a creator, lecturer or one-person company operator, and want to turn AI into a content pipeline that can truly divide labor, from personal style files, in-depth research, removing the AI ​​flavor, to converting one piece of material into multiple platform formats, welcome to attend the AI Content Production System Workshop held in Taipei on the morning of October 3 (Saturday). Three hours of implementation, limited to 16 people, no programming required.