History is the whipping boy of popular culture.
It's chic to be ignorant of this subject - to have escaped memorizing all those names and dates taught in high school. And this reaction may not be limited to westerners. It was not interesting to her. Academics, naturally, believe that history is an important part of our cultural heritage. If education is the process of transmitting that culture to the next generation, then history must be part of any full-scale curriculum.