It is, alas, also true that one often learns the wrong lessons. Getting pregnant twice, while not wanting to, is an example of the first rule. Eliminating cabbage patches is an example of the second. The fact is that we live in a world of uncertainties, in which we make our best guesses about a variety of potential futures. It is certainly better to have some background about a situation than to flail about wildly.
Good gamblers can calculate odds, and non-gamblers know that the house always wins.
Since history puts everything in a time context, history is taught everywhere, by almost everyone. Every subject has its past, and the present state of a discipline, like that of an individual life, is to be understood as a point on a continuum from then to now to the future. It can be comforting to know that one is part of a process, that others have faced similar trials and challenges, that many have survived and some have triumphed, and that this, too, whatever the current problem is, will pass away. It can be sobering to know that the here and now will one day be behind us. Those are lessons worth learning.