1 . People live in the present. They plan for the future. History, ______, is the study of the past. Given all the ______ and pressures that come from living in the present and ______ what is yet to come, why bother with what has been? Given all the available branches of knowledge, why insist - as most ______ systems do - on history? And why encourage many students to study even more history than they are _____ to?

Any subject of study needs to be______: supporters must explain why it is worth ______. Like most widely accepted _____, history attracts people who simply ______ the information and modes of thought involved. But for people who are less interested in the subject and more ______ about why they should bother with it, a clearer explanation of its purpose is required.

____ do not perform heart transplants, improve highway design, or arrest criminals. In a society that quite correctly expects education to serve ______ purposes, history’s functions can seem more ______ to determine than those of engineering or medicine. History is in fact very useful, actually _____, but the products of historical study are often less ______ and immediate than those of other subjects.

History helps us understand people, societies and how they ______. For example, how can we ______ past wars (and future threats) without using historical materials? Unfortunately, major aspects of a society’s operation cannot be set up as precise experiments. ______, history must serve, however imperfectly, as our ______, helping us understand who we are and why we do what we do. This, fundamentally, is why we cannot ______ history.