History has formed a part of educational systems in many cultures from ancient China to medieval Europe to modern America, and it has been a formal part of college and university curricula since those educational institutions were founded in Europe during the Middle Ages. In addition, the discipline of history aims to educate, to liberate the mind of the student in many ways. Basic to history is its ability to help us understand people who have acted or thought in ways different from our own. Through empathy we may also come to understand ourselves differently and better, to attain enhanced self-knowledge. This perspective is one of the great gifts that history can confer.
Memory is an essential part of our social existence.
Our culture is rooted in shared experience. Each one of us possesses a very immediate need for history, for to make sense of our own lives we need to develop a sense of understanding of our own past and the larger human experience. All human activities in this sense are historical in character. And in this way, we all must be historians, although we may never reach beyond a very amateurish understanding of the discipline we all use to make sense of our lives and surroundings. Professional historians devote their lives to making the past help to explain the present.