Past Mistakes Of America Research Paper

When thinking about the word America, an interesting word popped up in my head. It isn’t very easy to describe this word, as it’s unlike any other country. In fact, it is something more outstanding. Even though this country has made some big mistakes in its history, it doesn’t affect the definition it deserves. Americans are a mixed race of people that come from many different countries; sharing the same rights but possessing their own opinion on the idea of a better life for themselves and their families. The ability to connect with each other and cooperate also helps to define the ability to move forward and find new ways to innovate.

American history is a very important subject in our education, therefore, this vital topic shouldn’t be thought of as scary. By learning our country’s history, we understand the society we live in, the changes that occurred, and inspire us to do better. For better understanding of the subject some teachers believe that students will benefit from thinking American history as a “story”, while others look down on that idea. There are several pros and cons for the idea for thinking history as a “story”.

History matters a lot for each human life. First of all, it helps us to understand

American culture has changed over time as the country has grown. It is important to know our history so we can avoid the same mistakes that our ancestors made before us. With knowledge of our history and our prior mistakes, we can learn from them and make better decisions in the future.

Americas history is what defines us and who we are as a country. We were built on hard work, sacrifice, wanting to be free and independent to be who we want to. Now a-days, we seem to have fallen away from this. Everything is given to us so easily on our computer and through technology that we have no need to work hard anymore. This is the downfall in humanity because as we keep going, life will continue to get easier and we won’t want to do anything. History is our hope so that we can learn from what we did in our past and how things were done then.For starters, we can see what mistakes we did and make sure we don’t do them again. If we continue to the same thing over and over again, there’s no way for our society to improve from this. Our

War, Slavery, Sexism, and Lack of freedom, these were the issues America has faced that put our country through an uproar. Present day America has been through several trials and tribulations in the past to get to the peaceful state it is today. Throughout the course of time America has been hit with unfortunate periods of feuds with countries near and far, determining how little freedom you have based on your gender or race, and in most cases having the government dictate what happens in your life. Despite our hardships, America took baby steps to improve its country. These little and small changes brought us on the journey to turn America into the powerful nation it is now. American history gave us hope for the future.

Many Americans today are extremely uneducated and misinformed when it comes to the history of their nation purely because they find the learning of it boring. Because of the nature of American history courses and the distribution of knowledge in America, James W. Loewen wrote the book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, to make history more relevant to people who’ve been “bored to tears by their high school American history courses” (xii) because to be effective citizens today we must be able to understand our past.

Most people believe that the only way to get they want is to go to war or revolt against those who treat them badly. Some people also fear that good and honest people will turn to this type of violence to get what they want because it worked in the past. Look how the Pueblo Indians dealt with the Spanish, how Thomas Paine believed the only way to get their freedom from Britain was to encourage everyone to join the fight, and how Thoreau was afraid of expanding America because it meant the increase in slavery and in the chance slaves would turn on the United States of America to win their own freedom. History can be used to learn about our past and to see how it has affected the way the world acts today.

There are so many in this world that simply does not adhere to the ideals we believe in, maybe that is why they feel what’s in the textbooks today are useful information. The author’s of the textbooks should think back to when they were growing up, what they remembered and be sure to include it in the textbooks. There are so many significant events that have happened within the past ten years. History is important for our children to understand, to give them a better sense of how to understand what we do and a sense of what it means to be an American; a sense of importance and serving something greater than yourself in life.

The history of the United States began with the settlement of Indigenous people before 10,000 BC. Numerous cultures formed. The arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 started the European colonization of the Americas. Most colonies formed after 1600. The Spanish built small settlements in Florida and the Southwest, and the French along the Mississippi River and the Gulf Coast. By the 1770s, thirteen British colonies contained 2.5 million people along the Atlantic coast east of the Appalachian Mountains. After the end of the French and Indian Wars in the 1760s, the British government imposed a series of new taxes, rejecting the colonists' argument that new taxes needed their approval . Tax resistance, especially the Boston Tea Party, led

Walking through the streets of the United States you see a lot of different people. You see Mexicans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans and many more. When these people come to the United States they are looking for a better live. These people are running away from lack of resources, to unite their family again. They want a better economic prosperity and many other conflicts. But little do they know that the Unites States is as bad as their own. The difference is that the United States has more opportunity, holds a high prestige and can hide their mistakes easily. One example of were the Unites States fails the immigrants is the Criminal Justice System. The criminal justice system was design to keep the community safe. It also works on restoring and

What I find ironically funny is the statement quote used for this essay topic, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it”. This is something our government needs to take heed to, because they are the ones repeating history. Right now as we speak banks are again selling houses to people that cannot really afford the payments, they are signing contracts without reading the fine print of the balloon rates that are going to make it impossible to keep their

Whether the history be good or bad we can’t just forget like something never happened because what happens when something similar appears in the future, it could happen all over again! Tirman writes “Forgetting history is a national pastime of the opinion and policy elite” (Tirman 195). He goes on to talk about why America likes to forget the past; it’s because we have done something that might not look good in the public eye so it isn’t taught or talked about. A great example of the past repeating itself because we decided to not pay attention to the past is the resent Great Recession to the Great Depression. While the Great Recession was not as bad as the Great Depression one major key was the cause of both of these economic downtimes, and it was due to irresponsible lending and borrowing from banks and consumers. Could the recession been avoided, possibly if banks and people would pay more attention to the past and also be more careful when it comes to lending and borrowing. Tirman uses the American occupation in many countries as an example of us forgetting the past writing, “American-led genocide in the Philippines in the early 1900s? Never heard of it? Ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples in what is now America? We call it Manifest Destiny” (Tirman 196). We don’t think, talk, or learn about most of these things because of how diverse America is and we don’t want to be the “bad guy” even if it leads to something similar happening again. I agree with Tirman that no matter how bad something makes us look we still need to pay attention to it because what happens when something similar comes around in the future? Do we want it to happen again? If you ask me, it shouldn’t happen again because we want to look like the good guy and forget our horrible

In the book “Lies My teacher Told Me”, Professor James, Loewen has criticisms of the misreading and deliberately forgotten of the figures, events, and social form in American history from American high school’s history textbooks. Also, he discussed why American history teacher cannot guide students to treat and study history in a positive attitude. From this book, I realized many lies in American history from textbook. However, distortion of contemporary history was not only in America, since other countries had the same situation as well. Many Chinese and Koreans points that some description in Japanese history textbook between 1905 and 1945 are full of prejudices and errors. Iran's textbook also denies Nazi for the massacre of the Jews.

Many students always wonder why they have to take a history class. I myself have wondered this question many times, because history seems irrelevant to one’s education. In contrary, history is a vital subject to one’s education. It has been said numerous times that we take history so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes we have made in the past. Students retain different portions of information when learning something new. The recurring pattern that I have retained from sitting through numerous history classes, is the sense of patriotism. The American way of life has formed its own definition of patriotism from the Mayflower to 9/11 there has been a constant recurrence of patriotism.