Sociology of Literature. New German Critique, no. History is many things. When I teach, I hope that students will take away with them a sense of the similarities and differences between themselves and the people of the area and time-period studied. It's even more vitally concerned with what changed, how things changed, and why.
History also provides a corrective to our own assumptions and prejudices.
Certainly the study of history has practical aspects, too. For the teacher, there's the agony of trying to balance justice with compassion, and the uncomfortable feeling of being put in the place of judge when we don't have all the answers ourselves. But like it or not, grading won't go away. The best we can do is to try to make the process as clear and as consistent as possible, and to avoid the idea that grades are why we're here. We are here to learn, not to get grades.