Learning history in school felt like memorizing names and dates, but the older I get, the more I see how those dates explain the way people think today. I'm convinced that understanding past wars and treaties actually makes you less likely to be manipulated by patriotic slogans and propaganda. Yet it seems like most people treat history as a boring required class rather than a toolkit for seeing through current events, and that's on the education system as much as on the students. Do we really need to rethink how we teach history if it is going to matter at all?