Besides the fact that it’s super interesting and that even someone whose favorite subject isn’t history will find something interesting about it, history can teach practical skills like critical thinking and analysis/writing/clear communication (which college programs like to stress), and even beyond that -
History is important because it is literally how we came to be; people talk about it as if it’s something so alien, so disconnected, and so totally irrelevant from society today when it is exactly the opposite - can you analyze or understand society without also understanding how it came to be? Is it even possible to make any kind of meaningful statement about society without knowing any historical context?
This next point is kind of (extremely) cliche, but history encompasses all of humankind’s greatest and ugliest accomplishments, not to mention more or less every other subject. We can embrace the beautiful (the art, literature, culture, even the stories by themselves) and learn from the ugly. That was so cliche in fact I think I lifted that from some speech one of my middle school/high school teachers gave at the beginning of the year, but yeah, it’s still true. History can be a tool and it can be entertainment.
Also it’s so interesting even if your friend doesn’t think it’s important or particularly applicable to her own life!!! Even historiography and the way history is taught and what effect that has on people (and groups of people) is interesting! (Just think about the fact that interpretations and biased accounts of history can be and are used to oppress people, or the fact that so much propaganda depends on a general lack of historical knowledge to work, or the fact that this objective information can be interpreted and twisted a million different ways to a million different ends). The only thing I imagine could turn people off about learning history is the massive amounts of reading, and maybe the perceived impracticality of the subject.
What do you guys think?