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
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