The Problem with Yesterday

“Not to know the events which came before one was born, that is to remain always a boy”









Marcus Julius Cicero

“All these people are dead”. “None of this matters”. These are the statements my peers make in history class. It gets me to thinking, where our world would be without the people of our past, to show us what to and what not to do. If all the great ethical and mechanical innovators of our history vanished. If martin Luther king had never had a dream. If Thomas Edison had stopped at the 9,000th light bulb. If it weren’t for these people, I wouldn’t be typing this on a computer, because we would still be too busy discovering fire. We need to accept our history in order to prevent future mistakes of the same kind.
A recent development in Texas schools is a movement demanding the removal of most references to slavery from textbooks (Christian Science Monitor) is one such example of an intentional and malicious ignorance of our history. Political leaders of Texas are calling for the textbooks that are used by the states nearly 5 million students to have less references to slavery, even going so far as to rename it the Atlantic triangle trade. The slave trade was neither glorious nor good, but it did play an integral role in shaping the country we know today.
Some people have chosen to ignore history; some people have even tried to alter it. Mankind’s youth and adults need to educate themselves about our history, and learn from it the valuable lessons our ancestors have to teach. As long as droves of droves of our population try to ignore and change history, how will our future ever be safe?