This blog is actually a class assignment for one of my teaching courses at Henderson. I'm supposed to write 300 words about who I am and why I want to teach history. Well, I'm a very private person so the only topic I'm willing to talk about is why I want to teach History.
1) I'm good at it.
2) It's important.
History is the road trip of the human race. When you take off on a road trip there's two things to make it successful. You need a map and a car that's gonna make it.
History is the road trip of the human race. When you take off on a road trip there's two things to make it successful. You need a map and a car that's gonna make it.
And this resembles history....? If you take a wrong turn or miss your exit while driving, the map tells you how to get back where you wanna be. Think Bugs Bunny "I knew I should have made that left at Albuquerque..."
And if the car breaks down, you won't go anywhere until you fix the problem.
History is our map as a human race. No matter what mistakes we make today, somebody else has already made the same mistake. Hitler invaded Russia in the spring of 1941. Napoleon made that mistake 130 years earlier.
But history is more than a timeline of who did what, when. The engine of history is the choices made that create a chain of cause and effect. By understanding the choices made in the past, and their effects, we can avoid making the same mistake again. Unfortunately, the human race seems to be a poor mechanic. As a race, we like the same answers that didn't work last time...
And if the car breaks down, you won't go anywhere until you fix the problem.
History is our map as a human race. No matter what mistakes we make today, somebody else has already made the same mistake. Hitler invaded Russia in the spring of 1941. Napoleon made that mistake 130 years earlier.
But history is more than a timeline of who did what, when. The engine of history is the choices made that create a chain of cause and effect. By understanding the choices made in the past, and their effects, we can avoid making the same mistake again. Unfortunately, the human race seems to be a poor mechanic. As a race, we like the same answers that didn't work last time...
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