History, for me, at least, is a number one question as to if it is needed or not. History has three main reasons, in my opinion, as to why it is not needed. These reasons include, most people do not need history for their future, history always repeats itself, and last but not least, students do not need names from people that will not need to think of them as anything besides people with a big problem, or how they helped the world. 

My history teacher always sarcastically said “History never repeats itself”, and then went on to explain how what we do today is very similar to what we did about 200 years ago, or more. So, when you are going to learn about it in the future anyways in about 50 years, then why read a textbook about people we do not necessarily care about today.

Of course, there are some things that should be mentioned about history, but in my opinion, it should only be the super important things that have majorly affected people today. 

For example, maybe the Holocaust, or the World Wars, but I don’t think we should learn about why Henry Pu Yi got really mad because he was not a real king.

“History helps you learn from the mistakes in the past, you know history shapes who we are today, why we are who we are today, and what the world is today,” history teacher Catherine Webber argued.

What Webber stated, I do agree with, history does help shape people, but I do not understand how someone going to war for so long could be so important to a student’s education or life in the future? Please, explain that to me.

Somehow, history always has a way of coming back. There, of course, have been some things that have not repeated themselves yet, or maybe will not at all, but, even now there have been things that history has repeated.

Let’s think about Covid-19: How did so many people die of this illness? How everything was blamed and there become rules for a good amount of time so people did not get this illness. Sound familiar? No? Let me explain.

Now let’s think about it. Hmm, maybe the Spanish flu? Or perhaps mass extinction, I mean, maybe not, but the population did need to be lowered at one point. Covid-19 just seemed to happen at the wrong time for the government.

“I don’t think I should have to sit there for an hr and a half and worry about the past when I can be worrying about the future and working on other more important classes,” sophomore Courtney Cannon added. 

I agree with Cannon’s statement, well, at least a little bit. Cannon stated that history does not need to be needed at all, but to me, history is needed with the main lessons, but it is not needed for everything that happened in the world back then.

“I think history is very boring if not taught right. It’s hard to understand history too and can be a confusing topic. So overall, I’d say it’s useful to know but maybe it’s a little over taught,“ sophomore Rhiannon Sloan stated.

As Sloan exemplified, there are many different ways that people react to history. Some enjoy history a lot, and some do not like it at all. I am one of those people that do not enjoy history. Some students, including me, think most of history is a waste of time and should be handled in a different way.