Throughout the school week we have been looking into different history textbooks to differentiate between the information given by different textbooks, and it reminded me of something. I do not like learning about history. It was never that interesting to me, and it reached the epitome of boring. But Mr. Bolos raised an interesting point that I had never given much thought to, and that was why we learn so much history, particularly American history. Why did we learn so much? Why did we always revisit the same thing year after year? The obvious answer was that repetition would bring memorization, but I couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't correct. There is another reason, I think, that we repeat so much. If you look at the textbooks themselves, particularly the information they provide, the majority of it, throughout all textbooks, is a chronicled history of mistakes, things that the world has done completely wrong. Situations such as war, political snafus and blunders, flawed governing styles, and the like. So, while I do think that the repetition is for memory, it's not so we remember the history itself, it's so we remember the mistakes. It's like that horrible old quote goes "Those
who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." We remember the mistakes so that when the time comes to make decisions we don't repeat them. I think that's why we learn so much history. But what do you think?
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI think that you bring up an interesting point. We learn about mistakes made in history so that younger generations, such as ourselves, will hopefully not make the same mistakes again. But I also think that we learn so much history, particularly US history, so that we don't forget those who sacrificed themselves to make our world a better place. We live in a society with many privileges and we ought not to forget how these privileges came to be.