why is world history important t learn???

Question

i mean we don't need world history to get by in life! so why isn't it an elective??? why is it a mandatory course??

Answer 1

History in general allows us to identify and better understand our culture, customs, heritage, society, religion, politics, etc. It defines HOW we arrived at the present time.

History in a nutshell defines WHY we are WHO we are (defines us). If we forget our history we lose our identity.

Answer 2

It is hard to understand what is happening in the world today if you do not understand the past and what led up to it. It is also very difficult to try to CHANGE the world if you do not understand why things came to be, what has been tried and failed, what works, what doesn't. Pretty hard to grow up in a vacuum where no knoweldge of the past exists.

It also serves to (hopefully) make you less of an ethnocentric person - by learning about other countries and cultures and why and how they came to be - you see that your culture is not the only one out there...

as far as being a requirement rather than an elective - it is an elective after high school. Part of k-12 education is to give each student a well rounded education in many different areas of study - hopefully we all then can have a basic knowledge sort of on par with the knowledge most other people have. it gives us a common starting place, at least within our own society.

Answer 3

Blimey no. What happens if/when we have any sort of world disaster, environmental or man made, and we have no electricity? How will any one know how to do the simple things to keep themselves alive if they can't Google it? It's all very well teaching kids IT stuff that they'll need in the workplace but don't let them forget what came before!

Answer 4

The less a person knows about history, the more chance that person will be fooled by demagogues, simplistic political promises and political lies. You will end up like those Germans after WWII, pleading "We didn't know about it!". Remember : "Ignorantia juris non excusat" : "Ignorance of the law does not excuse" ! You're supposed to know the law, the same way you're supposed to know your history before stepping in the voting booth.

Answer 5

You don't need it to get by but it might help you get by better. For instance, if George Bush & Co. knew how Britain fared in Iraq in WWI perhaps they would have thought twice about invading it this time.
No one sems to be agreeing with you so perhaps I can offer something, however feeble, to support you. Back in the sixties (1960s, I mean) there was a saying, "History is irrelevant." I personally find it loathsome but a lot of others, certainly many members of today's power elite and perhaps even young George Bush at Yale, did not.

Answer 6

Au contraire, ma petite.
We do need world history to "get by in life" unless one's ambition is to live as an ignorant sheep, led whither one knows not to ends one cannot guess.
But we know where the ride ends for sheep, don't we?
History is much more than "memorizing dates." It is the science of understanding not only WHAT happened, but HOW it happened.
It is a truth that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Learning from the mistakes of our forebears is one of the great things about living in a society with books.
Of course, it doesn't prevent one from making the same stupid mistakes (President G.W. Bush), but at least it gives those of us with functioning brains a fighting chance.
Cheers.

Answer 7

There are classes I've had to take that I didn't enjoy(math & science). While I use basic math quite a bit, I've never said to myself "Thank God I took that geology class. That really came in handy today!" However, learning these things helps to make you a more well rounded person.

Answer 8

Some things in life need to be learned whether you use it or not. How do you know where you are going if you do not know where you have come from

Answer 9

it is necessicary for life. think of it this way, if if we never learned about world war 2 for example, then today there might be alot more syco dictators like hitler out there and then we might not realize it was wrong until it was too late. we learn history so we don't repete the bad stuff, just trust me, if no one studied history , we probably would be wiped out by now.

Answer 10

History is important because if you don't know where you came from, you don't know where you are going. And like others have said if you don't know your history you will repeat it.

example: If no one learned history enough to know the diseases are cause by bacteria and viruses, then wouldn't people just needlessly continue to die because they didn't know to take an anti-biotic when they got strep throat. and eventually some one would would figure it out. but this would repeat it self like an endless/needless cycle