Sarah Abuisnaineh
ALP 10, Hour 4
Ms.Greenspan
10/23/12
History affects our world
“Our ignorance of the past is not the result of a lack of information, but of information, but of indifference. We do not believe that history matters,” (Crabtree.) When studying history, the idea is not just learning about dates and people of the past, but using the knowledge learned and comparing events, understanding others backgrounds, and learning from previous mistakes made. The study of history in the school curriculum receives importance because it develops the skill to assess evidence, understand the background of the older generations, and gives students experience in assessing past examples of change.
Studying history refines students’ assessment skills; it helps build experience in interpreting the actions and statement of past leaders in comparison to those in our present time. Consider the presidential elections. When people want to choose a new leader, they look at the past elections and see if the words of the candidates are being repeated. According to Peter Stearns, “learning how to combine different kinds of evidence allows one to develop the ability to coherent arguments based on a variety of data (Stearns, 2008).” Students that inspect the Iraq war should use the Vietnam War as a reference because it allows one to reflect, leading to an argument from the events. The war in Iraq started on March 3, 2003, when President Bush announced “the possibility of Saddam Hussein acquiring dangerous weapons,” posing a “direct threat to the United States (Wong, 2008).” A similar comparison can be made with the War in Vietnam; the United States entered the war to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia. American leaders feared that Communist forces would gain control of Vietnam, and that nation after nation would fall to Communism. In a USA Today news analyst, Susan