Why Does History Matter

History is an important role into being a citizen. History shows the importance of identifying critical skills, and leadership.Without learning about history, citizenship wouldn’t be possible. Having historical events shows how to grow inside communities and within the liberal art division. Learning History shapes who a person truly is and allows growth.

Why is history important? It is both necessary and helpful to the study the context of prior history because it reveals who we are in relation to other people, cultures, and countries. History influences the way people can process information viewed from other races, and cultures, and even speak, “The old saying is, if we don’t know where we came from then we don’t know where we are going.” By studying history we can take what others’ have done and build on it.

In reading a Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich you realize that history seems so much less complicated when you are the one standing back and reflecting on the past. You realize how easy it is to often forget that every single new idea, religion and war was a struggle that lasted generations upon generations. History is more than just a page or a story, its our account of the world. That goes to show how short life and history is, you realize that history is always repeating, war after war, peace then war. There are good and bad periods in history and its up to us to learn from them. In a way history is much like a human being it goes through stages, learns about life, and has inner struggles or wars about their ideas and their beliefs.

The importance of our world's history is huge, because it teaches us about our past and how we came to be in the world we live in today. History can help you learn about our ancestor’s origins and cultures.

She carries the audience through her argument in a logical sequence. First, she makes her claim that student do not know history and explains her reasons (250). She then elaborates on what history students are taught and what exactly is wrong with the methods by which they learn (251). After this, she explains the job of a historian to the reader – how historians confront primary sources to “make some sense of what once happened” (252). To end the article, Simon describes how students can better learn history through exploring primary sources (253). This structuring and organization helps the reader to understand and to believe Simon’s

To know the past is to know the future. In his essay Knowing History and Knowing Who We Are, David McCullough argues about the importance of studying and teaching history. In his essay, he explains that there are three main points about history: character and its effect upon destiny, our failure of teaching the future generation, and the importance of learning and listening to history. David McCullough strongly advocates that audience should start to listen to and teach about the past in order to learn about the way a person’s character can affect their destiny.

The importance of our world's history is huge because it teaches us about our past and how we came to be in the world we live in today. History can help you learn about our ancestor’s origins and cultures.

Quote #1 - “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” ̶ George Santayana

History class in itself has a specific purpose which seems to be frequently forgotten. We learn about violent and horrible events in our past, as well as life- changing and positively impacting ones. From the negative events, we learn what went wrong and how to prevent similar tragedies from happening. From the positive, we gather knowledge and comprehension of the basis of our modern society. We are a self- repairing race, analyzing every flaw and figuring out what caused it. It's an ancient practice, trial and error is human nature.

“I don’t understand why I have to take this class. All that old history stuff has no relevance to my life, and it is a waste of time to fool with it. My life today is more important than the lives of all those dead and boring people.” This remark is said more frequently than we realize. History is a combination of events that created our present and future today. The past it what simply gives our present it’s value. Another way to look at history is it can be compared to our ancestry line. Without our ancestors we wouldn’t have the make-up of genes that we do today. For example, the Columbian exchange is one of the events in history that has really impacted our world. Not only did one change come from the event but a variety including food, plants, animals, goods and knowledge. History also exposes knowledge to us. It is the resource that allows us to better our lives and expand our knowledge. Believe it or not, our life we peruse everyday consist of history. Including languages, we inherited, religions that weren’t just created on the spot, technologies that have been upgraded in the past years, and the clothing we decided to put on our backs everyday that has evolved from different materials to different fittings. The world has evolved in many ways in the past and it continues to evolve.

In their essays; Why Study History and A Shield Against Fate and It’s Consequences, Diane Ravitch and T.H. Watkins, respectively, each make a case for why history history should be taught, and their arguments can be summarized by the above quote, an excerpt from Watkin’s piece. Where Ravitch focuses on the how it can improve intelligence, Watkins believes the significance of learning history lies in it’s ability to increase hope. They both, however, implicitly state that knowing about the past will make us better prepared to deal with and shape the future.

History is the foundation of everyone alive and deceased. Everyone in this world leaves a piece behind and marks the world in their own way. In history, important people who have done horrible and good things in this world have been recorded and displayed to children in schools. I mostly agree with the “The Politics of History by Howard Zinn” because it displays the fact that nearly every event in history has been done with a motive and has had consequences. A quote from Zinn’s work represents this is, “History is not inevitably useful.

In life and in history you have to make challenging decisions. If you make the wrong decision it can affect you. History and aren’t supposed to be simple, you will have both the ups and the downs in life. In life, you have to persevere through those times, because they will often happen. History, is the same way when countries were in war they had to preserve.

History is so important because it allows students to make informed decisions in the future by looking at the failures and successes of previous events. For example, many college freshmen are allowed to vote in the presidential election for the first time which is a big responsibility because they have the ability to vote the next leader of the free world into office. If their college did not make them take a history class many of students are most likely going to go in the voting booth very uninformed and pick a candidate primarily on their looks and what their friends and family think of each candidate or just simply vote because they have no idea what is going on and who to vote for. This is such a problem because they can not pick a candidate that correlates to their own values and beliefs, but simply what others want and believe. On the contrary if the college forced

Now and days every person must take at least two years of history in order to pass high school. Many people, including myself, ask the question,“Why must we take history?” Well the answer many of us get is, “ So that history does not repeat itself.” The real question of the matter is, Does history repeat itself? History has repeated itself over and over again. An example of this would be the genocide that occurred in the Ottoman empire in 1915, nearly 88 years later another genocide has occurred in Darfur in 2003. These two events are both similar and different in ways, but none-the-less are proof that history does in deed repeat itself.