History is the study of everything that has occurred. History has and will always stay the same since it is the study of what has already happened and there is no changing the past. History is the foundation of all knowledge that we have gathered and have today.  There is a problem happening right now in front of our eyes.  People in modern society underestimate the importance of history and are not learning from the past. 

How Has History Made An Impact?

History has made a long lasting impact on knowledge itself. The past teaches us about the present. History in itself is a big domino chain, a cause and an effect. Without history, the knowledge that we now know will start to crumble since nobody in the future will care about learning about the past. Still now, events like the Industrial Revolution still affect us today according to “greenwoodhigh.eu” . When Mrs. Liastro, a history teacher at WMS was asked why she thinks history is important, she responded with the following: “I think it’s really

important to understand the past to kind of understand one, how we got to where we are today; it also gives you a good context for things that are going on around the world and also you see a lot of connections with things that you learn or what happened in the past to things we have today. Even some of the names of companies or some of the slang terms that we have today come from [for example] ancient Greece so I think it’s really important not just to connect to what happens to today, but to also give appreciation for where things were and how things have changed.” In this quote, Mrs. Liastro states that things that happen in history connect us today.

How would it be dangerous if people stopped learning about history?

The past is what teaches us about the present and if people simply stopped caring, it would be bad. When I had an interview with Mrs. Liastro, I asked her how dangerous does she think it would be if people stopped learning history, she responded with the following: “Incredibly I think there are things you can learn from the past that really can impact the future you know there’s the saying ‘history repeats itself’ and especially I think it’s so important to learn the good and the bad of history so that you can, as a young adult and then as you enter into adulthood make choices that impact your life in a positive way as well as the lives of others and future generations.” This quote from Mrs.Liastro supports the idea that learning history can help decisions in your life today.

Unfortunately, there is already a decline in people wanting to learn history in the sense of in school but there is an incline of people who want to learn history in general find it interesting. My evidence is from a recent study from “historians.org”  when I was researching the importance of history. It said that interest in history is higher than ever (91% of Americans think it is important)  but the reason majors in history is declining (history bachelor’s degrees have dropped by 45% from 2007.  

When Mr.Miller, a history teacher at WMS was asked why he thinks that is he responded with the following: “I think people like to dabble with history in terms of watching a history channel, reading a book, and things like that which is good. Don’t get me wrong but the problem too is very limited employment opportunities with history. Your main jobs if you have a social studies major might be teaching or working as a college professor, or working within certain academic fields where the day-to-day person finding a job in business, there is really not a whole lot of demand for history majors and things like that. While people are interested in it, they also realize it is a limited opportunity in terms of employment and even the jobs don’t really pay so well.” According to Mr.Miller, the reason for people not wanting to get a degree in history is because there are not that many great paying jobs for history. 

Conclusion

History is a really important subject that people really undermine. All the knowledge that you know today and right now is because people studied what has already been known in the past.