You don't get critical thinking skills without practice. Practicing on subjects you don't care for (my mantra, "do what needs to be done, whether you like it or not") and realizing that the people before us usually did not pay attention to/see the patterns because they were busy doing what they wanted because they enjoyed it more and thus fell under the spell of being too skewed in their thinking toward their subject; the ENRON and other idiots weren't "dumb", they were just too caught up in their own immediate interests. I believe that sometimes being "forced" to look at other subjects can be personally useful, even if I don't see how at the moment.

It's nice to be able to turn our head toward something other than our own interest; but focusing on current interests gets to be an unconscious habit, like any other, and you'll miss history's lessons, despite critical thinking skills and common sense if you haven't ever been taught to look at history. History is an important discipline, deserving of honor, whether it is your discipline/interest or not?