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Some of you may have noticed that there is indeed a book in the library titled A History of Magic that was written by Bathilda Bagshot, but it is not entirely necessary for this course. You are welcome to read it, however! I never discourage outside reading, and it is certainly home to some valuable knowledge. But you should understand that magic has changed over the centuries and some of the information may not be current. Should you come across a disagreement, always defer to the answer provided to you in the lesson.
I cannot begin to explain the many reasons why history is important. In attaining my N.E.W.T.s in History of Magic, I had to take a class called "Importance of Magical History". It was a twelve-week course that had three sections that were all mandatory. The first was "Importance in Everyday Life", the second was "Importance in a Macro View", and the last was "Micro Theory of Historical Importance". Essentially, over those weeks, I studied concepts and theories as to why history is important. And now I am expected to explain to you in one book why they should care about this "old stuff".
History is important to us because we are living it. After all, we are in it, and because we are going to make it. It is happening every second, minute, and moment in time. Consider a timeline; there is not one moment in time where we stand still for two seconds. So, we are creating history at this very moment as you read this sentence.
History is also important to us because without it we cannot possibly hope to survive. If we as a wizarding society didn't study history, we wouldn't know that there was a Statute set forth to separate us from Muggles. We wouldn't know that underage cannot use magic outside of school. There would be laws broken every day and wars breaking out every second because we just wouldn't know.
