Why History Should Be Mandatory in Every Single Grade in Every Single School in America

"Those who don't remember history are condemned to repeat it." "The past is always a rebuke to the present." "History teaches everything, including the future." "If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development."

Those quotes are from, among others, Robert Penn Warren and Aristotle. There seems to be a general consensus among most great thinkers of the past few thousand years that history may be the single most important subject one can study. History leaves its mark on all other disciplines from languages to science to mathematics. And yet most human beings seem to have a genetic predisposition to ignore history. Thomas Edison is usually credited with inventing the light bulb, but as my article entails that is a lie. The light bulb was around for fifty years before Edison got to it. What Edison did-or rather his French assistant who actually figured things out-was waste years conducting experiments that had already been proven failures by other scientists. If Thomas Edison had been nearly as interested in learning about the past as he was in making sure the future bought into his myth, he could have had time to steal the ideas of countless other assistants. Of course, the most egregious example of the desire to ignore the history books is the Bush administration. This wretched hive of scum and villainy should have their hands cut off with a light saber for their across-the-board refusal to use them to open any of the history books that I feel sure must be in some library within the White House. If the Bush administration can be said to have produced one positive result-and that is certainly the best they can hope for-it is that they have forever illustrated the vital importance of teaching kids history. The years since Bush took office have been a textbook case for showing that an ignorance of history combined with a studious urge to ignore it can result in utter devastation. Anybody who resolutely refuses to learn history succeeds only in creating avoidable problems for themselves down the road.