Preview

Why Is US History Important?

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
985 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Why Is US History Important?
We probably all remember a mistake from our childhood. That time you thought it was a good idea to throw a ball at your brother’s face, or at something more… breakable. Or the time you yelled some very naughty potty words at your mother. We often get consequences that we remember forever. Paying all your allowance to fix the window, or your brother’s face. Or getting a tasty mouthful of soap. How about this? Emailing your friend a mean email when you’re mad at her. I got my email taken away for the rest of the summer until I wrote an essay to my parents explaining how I would not use my email to be mean. Do you remember a time? All of you should be saying yes. Has there also been a time where, because of the consequence that came with it, you never repeated it? About that emailing situation, I have never sent a mean email in 4 years. You’ve probably all heard the saying, "Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it." Why I brought this point up today is because of a recent change in George Washington University. They just barely made learning U.S. history optional for history majors. U.S. History is extremely important and it needs to be appreciated and taught.

So first we will learn about the mistake of throwing that ball and making U.S. history optional …show more content…
so we can never repeat those mistakes again. Now, I know I talked about this earlier, but this quote strikes me hard. "Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it." We are in danger if we don’t learn from the past. The best way to sum this up is a quote from Howard Zinn, “History is important. If you don’t know history it’s as if you were born yesterday. If you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything and you have no way of checking up on it.” When we don’t learn our history, people can tell you all the lies they want to, and you won’t be able to tell the
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Effective Use of Pathos in Lies My Teacher Told Me
    • 532 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Effective Use of Pathos in Lies My Teacher Told Me

    be straightforward in the First Edition Introduction: “Students consider history “the most irrelevant” of twenty-one subjects commonly taught in high school” (Loewen 1). He alludes to what most high school students already believe: history is boring. Loewen notes that history textbooks appear bland and often cover far too much information. Textbooks often have a lack of solid causation and lead students astray by focusing on facts, figures, and dates rather than main ideas and historical connections. Combining the average student’s attitudes towards history with flawed teaching methods leads one to…

    • 532 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Betrayal Of History Analysis
    • 452 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The Betrayal Of History Analysis

    The Betrayal of History by Alexander Stille was an interesting historical perspective about the evolution of textbooks used to teach our children about United States history. Prior to reading this article, I was unaware of the deliberate omissions and lies the publishers used to frame their narrative of our historical events. For example, publishers Holt and Rinehart want to create a multicultural hero for the Hispanic populations of Texas and California so they made up the story that a Spanish explorer Bartolomeo Gomez discovered the Hudson River. When, in fact, Gomez was Portuguese not Spanish and there was no evidence to support that he discovered the river.…

    • 452 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    What the United States Learned in the Vietnam War.
    • 411 Words
    • 2 Pages

    What the United States Learned in the Vietnam War.

    The United States made lots of mistakes in Vietnam. It stayed too long in the war, it failed to gather intelligence that could have saved lives, and we made rash decisions regarding the public’s reaction to us being there. The United States, at the most part, ignored these lessons as we continued some years later to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. But one mistake we did learn from was the allowance of free media in the war zone, and how never to do that again.…

    • 411 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    An Examination of Similes in the Iliad - and How Homer's Use of Them a
    • 1897 Words
    • 8 Pages

    An Examination of Similes in the Iliad - and How Homer's Use of Them a

    It is also wise to remember that history is written by the winners. In the…

    • 1897 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Book Review: Lies My Teacher Told Me
    • 1251 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Book Review: Lies My Teacher Told Me

    Loewen, takes a look at twelve popular American history textbooks and concludes that the information is false, viewed primarily from an European perspective, and made up to credit national myths. In addition, James Loewen presents many key historical events that he feels are missing from many of these textbooks and should be included. Published in 1995 by The New Press, Lies My Teacher Told Me rapidly became a multi-award winning novel. In roughly 400 pages, Loewen unfolds an engrossing critique that is bound to hook any reader interested in history or education.…

    • 1251 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Families Involved In The Holocaust
    • 274 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Families Involved In The Holocaust

    We can learn what happened in the past. In the past there was the holocaust. During this time over six million Jews and five million non-Jews were killed during this time period. This was a bad time in the world because they were doing very bad things like gassing the Jews shooting them. They even starved some of them to death.…

    • 274 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Should the Past Be Judged?
    • 2290 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Should the Past Be Judged?

    We can learn a lot from consulting the past. We learn more about our world, more about our history, and even more about ourselves. Spanish aphorist George Santayana once said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (qtd. in Moncur 1). In general terms, this famous aphorism means that it is important for us to study and learn from history in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes. However, the standards and values that we use today to judge the present are much different than they were in the past. What may have seemed like the right thing to do one hundred years ago might not be viewed the same way today. In her essay “At the Buffalo Bill Museum, June 1988,” Jane Tompkins questions whether or not we should judge the past by the standards and values of today. While visiting the Buffalo Bill Museum, Tompkins mentions that she is disturbed by the scenery of the museum and the statement made by William Frederick Cody, or Buffalo Bill, in the museum’s introductory video. Cody mentions that he wants to be remembered as “[the] man who opened Wyoming to the best of civilization” (Tompkins 588). However, Tompkins isn’t sure if he can be viewed as that man because of his controversial actions in the past. Although today’s standards and values are much different from those of the past, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t use them to judge the past. If anything, it is beneficial to judge the past by today’s standards, because we can use it as a learning experience. Society benefits when it judges the past from the current standards and values because as George Santayana mentioned, we must learn from history in order to avoid making the same mistakes.…

    • 2290 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The American education system is socially engineering minorities into accepting the role and doctrine that America has deemed appropriate for them.
    • 685 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The American education system is socially engineering minorities into accepting the role and doctrine that America has deemed appropriate for them.

    DEFENSE: The American school system plant seeds of patriotism in every school child. They teach history only from their own viewpoint, instead of teaching historical fact. An example of this is the teaching that the European ancestors of this country were heroic pioneers, but they are less likely to teach that these same heroic pioneers slaughtered massive numbers of Native Americans and stole their land (p.329, 330).…

    • 685 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Best Essays

    Ap Civil War & Reconstruction
    • 5291 Words
    • 22 Pages

    Ap Civil War & Reconstruction

    Advanced Placement United States History is a fast-paced and rigorous course designed to provide students with the analytical skills and factual knowledge necessary to critically examine various issues in American History and relate them to events today. Because of one’s opportunity to earn college credit, dependent on one’s performance on the AP exam (May 11, 2012 @ 8am) and your college’s admission standards, this course is considered a college-level course. Hence, the workload and required student responsibility reflect college-level expectations. In addition to the academic content, this class will work on developing the skills necessary to perform well on the AP exam and which will benefit you in your future academic pursuits. These skills include writing analytically, interpreting historical documents, evaluating history from multiple perspectives, public speaking and critical thinking.…

    • 5291 Words
    • 22 Pages
    Best Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The 14th Amendment
    • 792 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The 14th Amendment

    If any given history buff were to ask anyone on the street who the 7th president was, or what the significance of the 14th amendment is, would they be able to answer either question correctly? Would any high school students be able to answer them correctly? Although these seem like silly and random questions, they both have shaped America and it is a significant part of our history. These days, there are many people who don’t- or don’t care to know the history; whether it generally as humans or specifically as Americans. But, it is so important to know history to understand our standing in the world, and why it is this way. Generally speaking, each social studies class educates on different aspects; there are specific classes to learn laws…

    • 792 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Differences Between Atomic Bombings And Massacres
    • 217 Words
    • 1 Page

    Differences Between Atomic Bombings And Massacres

    We learn from our mistakes by not repeating them to provide a brighter future. When the atomic bomb went off in Hiroshima, the people in Japan knew they never wanted that to happen again. This is true when “[f]ive thousand delegates attended the first world conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs” ( Hersey 147 ). They all realized that did not help and the only way that it could be considered good was that it ended the war. Hopefully it would never happen again unless it was a necessity. That is relevant because it is very important, especially…

    • 217 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Compare And Contrast Essay About Spanish
    • 574 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Compare And Contrast Essay About Spanish

    To begin, our elders tell us not to repeat our past. I agree with what they are saystudents. Imagine if we could learn about our history so much, that we never made past experiences that would cause…

    • 574 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Lies My Teacher Told Me
    • 1297 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Lies My Teacher Told Me

    There is a common expression that a lot of us have heard at least one time “don’t believe everything you read”, just because a book is written and published does not mean is always accurate. True historical facts can easily be transformed by adding or taking away details in order to see it only from a certain perspective. The textbooks in history classrooms represent many different groups from the perspective of one group, usually European. Loewen explores the topic of why students dislike history classes. He also discusses the idea that much of what students learn in American history classes, is wrong and that there are many omissions. He challenges the Public School system mostly in regards on how history is taught in high school classrooms. American history books wish to paint the United States as the best country, almost to the point where they make it seem that it doesn’t have any flaws. A lot of books used to teach history in high school neglect to include the entire information on events that formed the United States. Reading some essays from the book Lies My Teachers Told Me helped me open my eyes and see how wrong history is taught in high school; we as citizens need to do the proper research and spread the knowledge among peers to create socially aware generations.…

    • 1297 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Why Is History Important
    • 929 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Why Is History Important

    “Were did we come from ?”, “How was it that our society came to be ?” people all around the world ask themselves questions like these to have an explanation or meaning to who they are. The fact is that History can help you understand change and to learn how the society we live in came to be. History can open doors to your heritage and Identity. In addition to helping you understand ‘who we are ’ and ‘how we came to be’ History can also teach us about mistakes made in the past by others so that we can avoid making them again. If you don’t know History you don’t know your culture or your way of life so you might as well never learn you place or part in the world. That’s why most modern nations believe its important that children should learn History because it defines your Identity, your culture and your heritage as well. Also because your culture can be really cool or it might have had an impact in the world that made society what it is today !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!…

    • 929 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Effect of Gadgets
    • 467 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Effect of Gadgets

    History and other supplementary subjects have become of no value lately. That is because people have found substitution to it. Modern people do not read books and do not go to the theatres. Everything in our life is substituted with Internet and TV. Cozy conversations at the fireplace are substituted with spontaneous and confused chat over the mobile telephones. Every day millions of people go to work to do some routine operations which repeat every day, from year to year. When they come home, they turn their computers on again and merge into their little universe, where they can be whatever they want. People grow lonely and…

    • 467 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics