How studying history has changed how I see things...

I was thinking about the purpose of history during class the other day and I realized something sort of surprising about how studying history has affected me. When I was younger, I think all I took away from my history classes were vague notions that the United States was the best country in the world, our particular brand of democracy was wonderful and flawless, that we were some sort of supreme, all-knowing, civilized society which would bring freedom to the backward people of the world, and some other things which now seem ridiculous. Really, it seems like all my former "social studies" classes ever did was breed patriotism in fourth graders who didn't know anything else. I'm not saying that's wrong--although everything was somewhat one-sided, that may have been appropriate when I was 9. Anyway, I'm pretty far removed from that now, and the history (and literature) I've had in high school have taught me to view the world in a completely different way. I realized that as I've learned it, history has made me somewhat of a skeptic about a lot of things in the present. When we study so many trends, movements, and specific periods of time, history shows everything to be in a state of flux. Also, the more I've studied other cultures and their values, the more I become conscious of the relativity of almost all people's ideas (including, maybe even especially, our own today). I guess I'm not sure if I explained this too well, but if anything, the social studies I've been exposed to have made me reluctant to accept anything in the present as very absolute.