Practical vs Ideal History
So there's two articles kind of welded together here, one on education and one on reasoning by historical analogy.
The critique of reasoning by historical analogy, on rereading, really comes across as a call for better history, with a specific focus on less anecdotes and less analogizing on single historical events "ie, every war is the last war or WWII". But I need to reread it to get that and, beyond a specific critique I'll make below, I'm not confident your writing is conveying your intent as clearly as it could be.
I would critique this, on two levels, as being unfair to the practical realities of what we use history for, both for decision making and for education. On education, I agree that anecdotes and stories are not the most accurate ways to convey historical information and facts but people really, really like stories and anecdotes. Kids especially like stories and anecdotes. And, whether it's small children or hormone laden adolescents or overworked and exhausted adults, stories and anecdotes make it much, much easier to teach people who kinda don't want to learn. In fact, that's generous, I've heard most teachers describe it as "shoving education down their stupid little throats". Which is not, ya know, ideal, but it's also a reality that in the short term we're trapped in this educational situation and a little honey, or in this case anecdotal stories, makes the whole much easier. In a similar fashion, I don't know a single executive person who has the time to do a deep historical dive on all the relevant historical events before undertaking a course of action. Honestly, 6 hours of their day are spent just firefighting and ducttapping things that are actively falling apart and 5 hours are spent trying to keep key stakeholders in line. As an analyst, you're usually lucky to get 15 minutes of undivided attention and, while they're very receptive, it needs to be very quick and very concise. And, usually, the best and clearest historical example for them is the last thing like this that happened. Afghanistan wasn't the Gulf War, and wasn't exactly Vietnam, but it's hardly like we're going to do an exhaustive study of every single potential comparable conflict AND boil that down into a clear 15 minute presentation that persuades them.
So I think it's less that you're prescription is incorrect as it is...impractical within the constraints of the system we currently have. Yes, schools are bad, but within the constraints of those schools, anecdotes and stories are helpful to keep the attention of the students. Likewise, large bureaucracies and distracted executives are bad but that's most of the large, bureaucratic organizations we have and the more data we try to summarize into concise, persuasive summaries, the harder it is, which puts a pretty hard upper barrier.
As for education itself, yes, schools are absolutely terrible, I am all in on their abolishment. I am concerned about the decline of history and civic knowledge, however, and I think there's a real danger to, um, "just-in-time" civic education.
Stealing very heavily from Christopher Lasch.
#1 Democracy originated in fairly simple situations where the local citizen could legitimately know all the relevant factors. In short, their society was very small and did not change much.
#2 As societies get larger and more complex, it becomes harder for a citizen to know all the relevant information and make informed decisions.
#3 This leads to "rule by experts". If you get educated 15 minutes before voting, the voter is, at best, heavily influenced by whoever is educating them, and more likely just doing whatever the "educator" is telling them.
#4 This is basically the death of democracy. This isn't a matter of rights or respect, it's a matter of raw competence. Modern government is legitimately too complex for the citizens and so they are, in a real sense, powerless in politics.
And I feel like, reading this, you basically want to ditch civics and history from public education, and I agree the kids ain't learning, but I think it's worth noting that we're pretty clearly abandoning a core component of the democratic dream. If we can't teach the kids the core facts of what US history is and how many branches of government there are, they don't have the ability or competence to meaningfully vote or interact politically. It feels....worthy of note.
https://parrhesia.substack.com/p/history-classes-are-not-particularly/comment/11721586