A report on the foundations on why someone should study history.

Essay by activematxCollege, Undergraduate August 2003

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Why Study History

Just because you know where you have been, does not mean you know where you are going. Knowing your countries past is very valuable information to possess, however it is not the sole option for our future actions. David McCullough writes a well written essay called Why History? In this essay McCullough addresses the issues of the importance of studying history and the benefits humans may gain from knowing their countries history. I generally agree with McCullough's motive to study history because "history is knowledge, knowledge is power" however I disagree with some of the points that he uses to support his thoughts.

McCullough writes about how our citizens are losing our memory of our history. He says that it is like a disease sweeping across the nation. He then says 4 out of 5 college seniors will be unable to pass a basic High School history test.

This all may be true however it is not fundamental. Perhaps these college students won't be able to remember the dates or the names or certain individuals who existed hundreds or thousands of years, -- but does this matter? Is this the part of history we want to remember? In my opinion, this is what the books and the records are for.

Based upon how often someone uses information determines what type of memory the brain stores this information. Two common labels for these types of memory are "short term memory" and "long term memory." When someone asks you to remember a phone number this number is stored into your short term memory. Your short term memory will remember certain information for a shorter amount of time, then slowly forgetting about it - since the brain never recalls this information again. However when you learn something different like, learning...