Why Study History?

1.  DEVELOP AN IDENTITY: History helps people understand who they are, teach others about   who they are, and gives a uniting purpose to themselves as a nation, community, or individual. History is a way for human beings to create themselves from their memories.

2.  TO GAIN KNOWLEDGE: History is a way to gain a body of knowledge of not only what happened and when, but also why events happened and how these events are related.

3.  EVALUATE INFORMATION: History is a way for us to evaluate, organize, and interpret a wide variety of facts, derived from a wide variety of sources, in an effort to understand the world of the past.

4.  AVOID REPEATING MISTAKES: Without studying history we are in danger of falling into the trap that the positions we face and the solutions we propose have never been seen before and have no relation to the past. History can serve as a remedy to this narrow present-mindedness.