Mr. Meyer

Why study history? That is a question that almost every student will ask at one point or another, and is a question that will produce an array of answers as varied as the students themselves. One possible answer for why we study history is the obvious: because this is a requirement for graduation. Another possible answer suggests that we can somehow tell the future by learning from the mistakes of the past. A third possible answer argues that we should have a knowledge base of history, especially the history of the world in which we live. But is that enough of a reason to study history? I would argue that we study history because we want to know our past and want to try to understand ourselves, and perhaps, by doing that, we want to try and understand where we are going. History, then, is the study of ourselves and how and why we are who we are and what makes us, us.