Why Study History

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‘WHY STUDY HISTORY?’ – CANFORD ESSAY W When asked the question, ‘Why Study History?’ one might answer by saying, ‘we study history because it's essential to understand the past in order to understand the present. We can learn how events from the past affected us today, and from that we can perceive how the things we do now can affect the future. This way, we could understand the world today and why things are the way they are’. One reason why we study history is to see how history repeats itself. We need to learn from our past mistakes. As we study and examine history, we recognize what things wouldn't work if we try it because it already failed in the past. For example, NASA, I don’t think, would ever waste precious time and money again trying to develop another ‘space pen’ when in fact, Russia just used a pencil. This is viewed as a fatal error and cost NASA over $5 Million. Another thing which we could learn from is warfare. Everybody knows that warfare produces loss of life. These are usually innocent lives. For example, the current war in Afghanistan is not going anywhere at the moment, but in the news all I seem to hear about is the loss of life and the families who suffer from it. I feel that if we learnt from all aspects of older warfare, we would realise that we are all part of a Great War, interlinked from ancient times. Another reason as to why we study history is so we could understand other people from other countries. In the real world, we'll have to work in our jobs with other people who are from different ethnic groups with different cultures. It's important to understand their background because it's much easier to cooperate with the people we work with if we know more about them. It's better if we are not immature towards this because that way the working environment would not be an enjoyable place to work in, and we'll be able to make more friends

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