How come most of the history that I remember learning in school dealt with stuff before 1900? How Europeans found the U.S., all the indian stuff, revolutions, war of 1812, tea parties, lincoln, etc.
Why is that important to learn? Since time is limited, shouldn’t I be learning about more recent history that actually has an effect on today?
“We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel came on today, and I realized that, being born in 1980, I didn’t really know much about what he was talking about. Here’s a good list on Wikipedia.
For example, The Bay of Pigs Invasion. Happened 19 years before I was born. I don’t remember being taught anything about it, and I wouldn’t have learned anything about it if it weren’t for my obsession with spending hours on wikipedia and reading random articles.
Now that I know a little about it, I know that the U.S. has a history of wanting to overthrow governments (I’m sure there’s also a ton of other examples, something to do with Che and Latin America and stuff). That’s sorta important information to have now that the U.S. is establishing more governments in the Middle East. And, since my generation is going to be taking over in 10 years, you’d think that we should know the history.
How about when the U.S. mistakenly shot down a Iran commercial plane with 290 people on it? Happened in 1988. I had no idea that happened, and I was 8 at the time.
1 Response to “History Lessons”
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September 29th, 2007 at 10:28 AM
You should have paid more attention in history class.